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THACKERAY

MACMILLAN AND CO., Limrrep

LONDON » BOMBAY + CALCUTTA + MADRAS
MELBOURNE

THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK + BOSTON + CHICAGO
DALLAS +» SAN FRANCISCO

THE MACMILLAN CO, OF CANADA, Ltn.
TORONTO :

ENGLISH MEN OF -LETTERS

THACKERAY

BY

ANTHONY TROLLOPE

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON

1909

RicHARD Clay aND Sons, LIMITED,
BREAD STREET HILL, E.C., AND
BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.

First Edition, 1879.
Reprinted, 1880, 1882, 1886, 1887, r892, 1895, 1QEO, 1905
Library Edition, 1902, 1906.
Pocket Edition, 1909.

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

BIOGRAPHICAL

CHAPTER II.

FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH .

CHAPTER Iil.

Vanity Fair

CHAPTER IV.

PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES .

CHAPTER V.

ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS

CHAPTER VI.

THACKERAYS BURLESQUES .

PAGE
1

62

99

103

122

139

vi CONTENTS.

CHAPTER VII.

THACKERAY’S LECTURES

CHAPTER VIII.

THACKERAY’S BALLADS

CHAPTER IX.

THACKERAY S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK

PAGE

154

168

184

‘THACKHRAY.

CHAPTER I.
BIOGRAPHICAL

In the foregoing volumes of this series of English Men
of Letters, and in other works of a similar nature which
have appeared lately as to the Ancient Classics and
Foreign Classics, biography has naturally been, if not the
leading, at any rate a considerable element. The desire
is common to all readers to know not only what a great
writer has written, but also of what nature has been the
man who has produced such great work. As to all the
authors taken in hand before, there has been extant some
written record of the man’s life. Biographical details
have been more or less known to the world, so that,
whether of a Cicero, or of a Goethe, or of our own
Johnson, there has been a story to tell. Of Thackeray
no life has been written; and though they who knew
him,—and possibly many who did not,—are conversant
with anecdotes of the man, who was one so well known
in society as to have created many anecdotes, yet there
has been no memoir of his life sufficient to supply the
wants of even so small a work as this purports to be.

n

2 THACKERAY. [CHAP,

For this the reason may simply be told. Thackeray, not
long before his death, had had his taste offended by some
fulsome biography. Paragraphs, of which the eulogy
seemed to have been the produce rather of personal love
than of inquiry or judgment, disgusted him, and he
begged of his girls that when he should have gone
there should nothing of the sort be done with his
name.

We can imagine how his mind had worked, how he
had declared to himself that, as by those loving hands
into which his letters, his notes, his little details,—his
literary remains, as such documents used to be called,—
might naturally fall, truth of his foibles and of his short-
comings could not be told, so should not his praises be
written, or that flattering portrait be limned which
biographers are wont to produce. Acting upon these
instructions, his daughters,—while there were two living,
and since that the one surviving,—have carried out the
order which has appeared to them to be sacred. Such
being the case, it certainly is not my purpose now to write
what may be called a life of Thackeray. In this pre-
liminary chapter I will give such incidents and anecdotes
of his life as will tell the reader perhaps all about him
that a reader is entitled to ask. I will tell how he
became an author, and will say how first he worked and
struggled, and then how he worked and prospered, and
became a household word in English literature ;—how,
in this way, he passed through that course of mingled
failure and success which, though the literary aspirant
may suffer, is probably better both for the writer and for
the writings than unclouded early glory. The suffering
no doubt is acute, and a touch of melancholy, perhaps of
indignation, may be given to words which have been

f. | BIOGRAPHICAL. 3

written while the heart has been too full of its own
wrongs; but this is better than the continued note of
triumph which is still heard in the final voices of the
spoilt child of literature, even when they are losing their
inusic. Then I will tell how Thackeray died, eariy
indeed, but still having done a good life’s work. Some-
thing of his manner, something of his appearance IL
ean say, something perhaps of his condition of mind;
because for some few years he was known to me.
But of the continual intercourse of himself with the
world, and of himself with his own works, I ean tell
little, because no record of his life has been made
public.

William Makepeace Thackeray was born at Caleutta,
on July 18, 1811. His father was Richmond Thackeray,
son of W. M. Thackeray of Hadley, near Barnet, in
Middlesex. A relation of his, of the same name, a
Rev. Mr. Thackeray, I knew well as rector of Hadley,
many years afterwards. Him I believe to have been
a second cousin of our Thackeray, but I think they
had never met each other. Another cousin was Provost
of Kings at Cambridge, fifty years ago, as Cambridge
men will remember. Clergymen of the family have been
numerous in England during the century, and there was
one, a Rev. Elias Thackeray, whom I also knew in my
youth, a dignitary, if I remember right, in the diocese of
Meath. The Thackerays seem to have affected the Church ;
but such was not at any period of his life the bias of our
novelist’s mind.

His father :md grandfather were Indian civil servants.
His mother was Anne Becher, whose father was also in
the Company’s service. She married early in India, and

was only nineteen when her son was born. She was left
BY

4 THACKERAY. [ CHAP,

a widow in 1816, with only one child, and was married a
few years afterwards to Major Henry Carmichael Smyth,
with whom Thackeray lived on terms of affectionate inter-
course till the major died. All who knew William
Makepeace remember his mother well, a handsome, spare,
gray-haired lady, whom Thackeray treated with a courtly
deference as well as constant affection. There was,
however, something of discrepancy between them as to
matters of religion. Mrs. Carmichael Smyth was disposed
to the somewhat austere observance of the evangelical
section of the Church. Such, certainly, never became
the case with her son. There was disagreement on the
subject, and probably unhappiness at intervals, but never,
I think, quarrelling. Thackeray’s house was his mother’s
home whenever she pleased it, and the home also of his
stepfather.

He was brought a child from India, and was sent
early to the Charter House. Of his life and doings there
his friend and schoolfellow George Venables writes to me
as follows ;

“My recollection of him, though fresh enough, does
not furnish much material for biography. He came to
school young,—a pretty, gentle, and rather timid boy. I
think his experience there was not generally pleasant.
Though he had afterwards a scholarlike knowledge of Latin,
he did not attain distinction in the school; and I should
think that the character of the head-master, Dr. Russell,
which was vigorous, unsympathetic, and stern, though
not severe, was uncongenial to hisown. ‘With the boys
who knew him, Thackeray was popular; but he had no
skill in games, and, I think, no taste for them .

He was already known by his faculty of making verses,

J BIOGRAPHICAL. 5

chiefly parodies. I only remember one line of one parody
ona poem of L. E. L.’s, about ‘ Violets, dark blue violets ;’
Thackeray’s version was ‘ Cabbages, bright green cabbages,’
and we thought it very witty. He took part in a scheme,
which came to nothing, for a school magazine, and he
wrote verses for it, of which I only remember that they
were yood of their kind. When I knew him better, in
later years, I thought I could recognise the sensitive nature
which he had as a boy . . . . His change of retrospective
feeling about his school days was very characteristic. In
his earlier books he always spoke of the Charter House
as Slaughter House and Smithfield. As he became famous
and prosperous his memory softened, and Slaughter House
was changed into Grey Friars where Colonel Newcome
ended his life.”

In February, 1829, when he was not as yet eighteen,
Thackeray went up to Trinity College, Cambridge, and
was, I think, removed in 1830. It may be presumed,
therefore, that his studies there were not very serviceable to
him. There are few, if any, records left of his doings at
the university,—unless it be the fact that he did there
commence the literary work of his life. The line about
the cabbages, and the scheme of the school magazine, can
hardly be said to have amounted even to a commencement.
In 1829 a little periodical was brought out at Cambridge,
called The Snob, with an assurance on the title that it
was not conducted by members of the university. It is
presumed that Thackeray took a hand in editing this,
He certainly wrote, and published in the little paper,
some burlesque lines on the subject which was given
for the Chaneellor’s prize poem of the year. This was
Timbuctoo, and Tennyson was the victor on the occasion.

8 THACKERAY.: fear,

There is,some good fun in the four first and four last
lines of Thackeray’s production.

In Africa,—a quarter of the world,—

Men’s skins are black; their hair is crisped and curled;

And somewhere there, unknown to public view

A mighty city lies, called Timbuctoo.

a % #

I see her tribes the hill of glory mount,

And sell their sugars on their own account ;

While round her throne the prostrate nations come,

Sue for her rice, and barter for her rum.

I cannot find in The Snob internal evidence of much
literary mevit beyond this, But then how many great
writers have there been from whose early lucubrations no
future literary excellence could be prognosticated ?

There is something at any rate in the name of the pub-
lication which tells of work that did come. Thackeray’s
mind was at all times peculiarly exercised with a sense
of snobbishness. His appreciation of the vice grew ab-
normally, so that at last he had a morbid horror of a snob
—a morbid fear lest this or the other man should turn
snob on his hands. Itis probable that the idea was taken
from the early Snod at Cambridge, either from his own
participation in the work or from his remembrance of it.
The Snob lived, I think, but nine weeks, and was followed
at an interval, in 1830, by The Gownsman, which lived to
the ‘seventeenth number, and at the opening of which
Thackeray no doubt had a hand. It professed to be a
continuation of Zhe Snol. It contains a dedication to all
proctors, which I should not be sorry to attribute to him.
“To all Proctors, past, present, and future—

' Whose taste. it is our privilege to follow,
Whose virtue it is our duty to imitate,
Whose presence it i ig our interest to avoid.” °

ee |

There is, however, nothing beyond fancy to induce me 3 to

tJ BIOGRAPHICAL. 7

believe that Thackeray was the author of the dedication,
and I do not know that there is any evidence to show
that he was connected with The Snob beyond the writing
of Timbuctoo.

In 1830 he left Cambridge, and went to Weimar either
in that year or in 1831. Between Weimar and Paris he
spent some portion of his earlier years, while his family,
—his mother, that is, and his stepfather,—were living in
Devonshire. It was then the purport of his life to become
an artist, and he studied drawing at Paris, affecting
especially Bonnington, the young English artist who
had himself painted at Paris and who had died in 1828.
He never learned to draw,—perhaps never could have
learned. That he was idle, and did not do his best, we
may take for granted. He was always idle, and only on
some occasions, when the spirit moved him thoroughly,
did he do his best even in after life. But with drawing,
—or rather without it,—he did wonderfully well even
when he did his worst. He did illustrate his own
books, and everyone knows how incorrect were his
delineations. But as illustrations they were excellent,
How often have I wished that characters of my own
creating might be sketched as faultily, if with the
same appreciation of the intended purpose. Let anyone
look at the “plates,” as they are called in Vanity Furr,
and compare each with the scenes and the characters
intended to be displayed, and there see whether the artist,
—if we may call him so,—has not managed to convey in
the picture the exact feeling which he has described in
the text. I have a little sketch of his, in which a cannon-
ball is supposed to have just carried off the head of an
aide-de-camp,—messenger I had perhaps better say, lust I
might affront military feelings,—who is kneeling on the
field of battle and delivering a despatch to Marlborough

8 THACKERAY. [CHAP.

on horseback. The graceful ease with which the duke
receives the message though the messenger’s head be gone,
and the soldier-like precision with which the headless hero
finishes his last effort of military obedience, may not have
been portrayed with well-drawn figures, but no finished
illustration ever told its story better. Dickens has in-
formed us that he first met Thackeray in 1835, on which
occasion the young artist aspirant, looking no doubt
after profitable employment, “proposed to become the
illustrator of my earliest book.” It is singular that
such should have been the first interview between the
two great novelists. We may presume that the offer was
rejected.

In 1832, Thackeray came of age, and inherited his
fortune,—as to which various stories have been told. I+
seems to have amounted to about five hundred a year, and
to have passed through his hands in a year or two,
interest and principal. It has been told of him that it
was all taken away from him at cards, but such was not
the truth. Some went in an Indian bank in which he
invested it. A portion was lost at ecards, But with
some of it,—the larger part as I think,—he endeavoured,
in concert with his stepfather, to float a newspaper, which
failed. There seem to have been two newspapers in
which he was so concerned, The National Standard and
The Constitutional. On the latter he was engaged with
his stepfather, and in carrying that on he lost the last
of his money. The National Standard had been
running for some weeks when Thackeray joined it, and
lost his money in it. It ran only for little more than
iwelve months, and then, the money having gone, the
periodical came to an end. I know no road to fortune
more tempting to a young man, or one that with more
certainty leads to ruin. Thackeray, who in a way more or

1] BIOGRAPHICAL. 9

less correct, often refers ‘im his writings, if not to the
incidents, at any rate to the remembrances of his own life,
tells us much of the story of this newspaper in Lovel the
Widower. “They are welcome,” says the bachelor, “to
make merry at my charges in respect of a certain bargain
which I made on coming to London, and in which, had I
been Moses Primrose purchasing green spectacles, I could
scarcely have been more taken in. My Jenkinson was
an old college acquaintance, whom I was idiot enough to
imagine a respectable man. The fellow had a very smooth
tongue and sleek sanctified exterior. He was rather a
popular preacher, and used to ery a good deal in the
pulpit. He and a queer wine merchant and bill dis-
counter, Sherrick by name, had somehow got possession
of that neat little literary paper, Zhe Museum, which per-
haps you remember, and this eligible literary property my
friend Honeyman, with his wheedling tongue, induced
me to purchase.” Here is the history of Thackeray's money,
told by himself plainly enough, but with no intention on
his part of narrating an incident in his own life to the
public. But the drollery of the circumstances, his own
mingled folly and young ambition, struck him as being
worth narration, and the more forcibly as he remembered
all the ins and outs of his own reflections at the time,—
how he had meant to enchant the world, and make his
fortune. There was literary capital in it of which he
could make use after so many years. Then he tells us
of this ambition, and of the folly of it; and at the same
time puts forward the excuses to be made for it. “I
daresay I gave myself airs as editor of that confounded
Museum, and proposed to educate the public taste, to
diffuse morality and sound literature throughout the
nation, and to pocket a liberal salary in return for my
services. J daresay I printed my own sonnets, my own

10 ‘THACKERAY. ' (crap,

tragedy, my own verses... . I daresay I wrote satirical
articles. . . . I daresay I made a gaby of myself to the
world. Pray, my good friend, hast thou never done
likewise? If thou hast never been a fool, be sure thou
wilt never be a wise man.” Thackeray was quite aware
of- his early weaknesses, and in the maturity of life knew
well that he had not been precociously wise. He delighted
so to tell his friends, and he delighted also to tell the
public, not meaning that any but an inner circle should
know that he was speaking of himself. . But the story
now is plain to all who can read."

It was thus that he lost his money; and then, not
having prospered very well with his drawing lessons in
Paris or elsewhere, he was fain to take up literature as
a profession. It is a business which has its allurements,
It requires no capital, no special education, no training,
and may be taken up at any time without a moment’s
delay. If a man can command a table, a chair, pen,
paper, and ink, he can commence his trade as literary
man. It is thus that aspirants generally do commence
it. A man may or may not have another employment
to back him, or means of his own; or,—-as was the case
with Thackeray, when, after his first misadventure, he had
to look about him for the means of living,—he may
have nothing but his intellect and his friends. But the
idea comes to the man that as he has the pen and ink,

+ The report that he had lost all his money and was going to
live by painting in Paris, was still prevalent in London in 1886.
Macready, on the 27th April of that year, says in his Diary; “At
Garrick Club, where I dined and saw the papers. Met Thackeray,
who has spent all his fortune, and is now about to settle in Paris,
I believe as an artist.” But at this time he was. in truth. tnrming
to literature as a profession.

Ly BIOGRAPHICAL. 11

and time on his hand, why should he not write and make
money ?

It is an idea that comes to very many men and women,
old as well as young,—to many thousands who at last are
crushed by it, of whom the world knows nothing. <A
man can make the attempt though he has not a coat fit
to go out into the street with; or a woman, though she
be almost in rags. There is no apprenticeship wanted.
Indeed there is no room for such apprenticeship. It is
an art which no one teaches; there is no professor who,
in a dozen lessons, even pretends to show the aspirant
how to write a book or an article. If you would be a
watchmaker, you must learn; or a lawyer, a cook, or
even a housemaid. Before you can clean a horse you
must go into the stable, and begin at the beginning.
Even the cab-driving tiro must sit for awhile on the
box, and learn something of the streets, before he can
ply for a fare. But the literary beginner rushes at once
at the top rung of his ladder ;—as thougha youth, having
made up his mind to be a clergyman, should demand,
without preliminary steps, to be appointed Bishop of
London. That he should be able to read and write is
presumed, and that only. So much may be presumed of
everyone, and nothing more is wanted.

In truth nothing more is wanted,—except those inner
lights as to which. so many men live and die without
having learned’ whether they possess them or not. Prac-
tice, industry, study of literature,. cultivation of taste, and
the rest, will of course lend their aid, will probably be
necessary before high excellence is attained. But the
instances are not to seek,—are at the fingers of us all,
—in which the first uninstructed effort has succeeded.
A boy;.almost, or perhaps an old woman, has sat down

12 THACKERAY. : [ CHAP,

and the book has come, and the world has read it, and
the booksellers have been civil and have written their
cheques. When all trades, all professions, all seats at
offices, all employments at which a crust can be earned,
are so crowded that a young man knows not where to
look for the means of livelihood, is there not an attrac-
tion in this which to the self-confident must be almost
invincible? The booksellers are courteous and write
their cheques, but that is not half the whole? Monstrari
digitto/ That is obtained. The happy aspirant is written
of in newspapers, or, perhaps, better still, he writes of
others. When the barrister of forty-five has hardly got a
name beyond Chancery Lane, this glorious young scribe,
with the first down on his lips, has printed his novel and
been talked about.

The temptation is irresistible, and thousands fall into
it. How is a man to know that he is not the lucky one
or the gifted one? There is the table and there the pen
and ink. Among the unfortunate he who fails altogether
and from the first start is not the most unfortunate. A
short period of life is wasted, anda sharp pang is endured.
Then the disappointed one is relegated to the condition
of life which he would otherwise have filled a little earlier.
He has been wounded, but not killed, or even maimed.
But he who has a little success, who succeeds in earning a
few halcyon, but, ah ! so dangerous guineas, is drawn into
a trade from which he will hardly escape till he be
driven from it, if he come out alive, by sheer hunger.
He hangs on till the guineas become crowns and shillings,
—till some sad record of his life, made when he applies
for charity, declares that he has worked hard for the last
year or two and has earned less than a policeman in the
streets or a porter at a railway. It is to that that he is

1.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 18

brought by applying himself to a business which requires
only a table and chair, with pen, ink, and paper! It is to
that which he is brought by venturing to believe that he
has been gifted with powers of imagination, creation, and
expression.

The young man who makes the attempt knows that
he must run the chance. He is well aware that nine
must fail where one will make his running good. So
much as that does reach his ears, and recommends itself
to his common sense. But why should it not be he as
well as another? There is always some lucky one winning
the prize. And this prize when it has been won is so
well worth the winning! He can endure starvation,—so
he tells himself,—-as well as another. He will try. But
yet he knows that he has but one chance out of ten in
his favour, and it is only in his happier moments that
he flatters himself that that remains to him. Then there
falls upon him,—in the midst of that labour which for its
success especially requires that a man’s heart shall be
light, and that he be always at his best,—doubt and
despair. If there be no chance, of what use is his

labour ?
Were it not better done as others use,
To sport with Amaryllis in the shade,

and amuse himself after that fashion? Thus the very
industry which alone could give him a chance is discarded.
Tt is so that the young man feels who, with some slight
belief in himself and with many doubts, sits down to
zommence the literary labour by which he hopes to live.
So it was, no doubt, with Thackeray. Such were his
hopes and his fears ;—with a resolution of which we can.
well understand that it should have waned at times, of
earning his bread, if he did not make his fortune, in the

4 THACKERAY. [omar

world of literature. One has not to look far for evidence of
the condition I have described,—that it was so, Amaryllis
and all. How or-when he made his very first attempt
in London, I have not learned ; but he had not. probably
spent his money without forming “ press” acquaintances,
and had thus found an aperture for the thin end of the
wedge. He wrote for The Constitutional, of which he was
part proprietor, beginning his work for that paper as a
correspondent from Paris. For a while he was connected
with The Times newspaper, though his work there did not
I think amount to much. His first regular employment
was on Fraser's Magazine, when Mr. Fraser’s shop was in
Regent Street, when Oliver Yorke was the presumed editor,
and among contributors, Carlyle was one of the most
notable. I imagine that the battle of life was difficult
enough with him even after he had become one of the
leading props of that magazine. All that he wrote was
not taken, and all that was taken was not approved. In
1837-38, the History of Samuel Titmarsh and. the Great
Hoggarty Diamond appeared in the magazine. The
Great Hoggarty Diamond is now known’ to all yeaders
of Thackeray’s works. Jt is not my purpose to speak
specially of it here, except to assert that it has been
thought to be a great success. When it was being
brought out, the author told a friend of his,-and of mine,—
that it was not much thought of at Fraser’s, and that he
had been called upon to shorten it. That is an incidert
disagreeable in its nature to any literary gentleman, and
likely to be specially so when he knows that his provision
of bread, ¢ertainly of improved bread: and butter, is ‘at
stake.’ The man who thus darkens his literary brow with
the frown of disapproval, has at: his disposal all the: loaves
and all the fishes that’ are going. If the writer be sue:

1. BIOGRAPHICAL. 15

cessful, there will come a time when he will be above such
frowns; but, when that opinion went forth, Thackeray
had not yet made his footing good, and the notice to him
respecting it must have been very bitter. It was in
writing this Hoggarty Diamond that Thackeray first
invented the name of Michael Angelo Titmarsh. Samuel
Titmarsh was the writer, whereas Michael Angelo was an
intending illustrator. Thackeray’s nose had been broken
in a school fight, while he was quite a little boy, by
another little boy, at the Charter House; and there was
probably some association intended to be jocose with the
name of the great artist, whose nose was broken by his
fellow-student Torrigiano, and who, as it happened, died
exactly three centuries before Thackeray.

I can understand all the disquietude of his heart when
that warning, as to the too great length of his story, was
given to him. He was not a man capable of feeling at
any time quite assured in his position, and when that
occurred he was very far from assurance. J think that at
no time did he doubt the sufficiency of his own mental
qualification for the work he had taken in hand; but he
doubted all else. He doubted the appreciation of the
world ; he doubted his fitness for turning his intellect to
valuable account; he doubted his physical capacity,—
dreading his own lack of industry ; he doubted his luck ;
he doubted the continual absence of some of those mis-
fortunes on which the works of literary men are ship-
wrecked. Though he was aware of his own power, he
always, to the last, was afraid that his own deficiencies
should be too strong against him. It was his nature to
be idle,—to put off his work,—and then to be angry with
himself for putting it off Ginger was hot in the mouth
with him, and all the allurements of the world were strong

16 THACKERAY. [owap,

upon him. To findon Monday morning an excuse why he
should not on Monday do Monday’s work was, at the
time, an inexpressible relief to him, but had become a
deep regret,—almost a remorse,—before the Monday was
over. To such a one it was not given to believe in him-
self with that sturdy rock-bound foundation which we see
to have belonged to some men from the earliest struggles
of their career. To him, then, must have coms an inex-
pressible pang when he was told that his story must be
curtailed.

Who else would have told such a story of himself to
the first acquaintance he chanced to meet? Of Thackeray
it might be predicted that he certainly would do so. No
little wound of the kind ever came to him but what he
disclosed it at once. “They have only bought so many
of my new book.” “Have you seen the abuse of my
last number?” ‘“ What am I to turn my hand to? They
are getting tired of my novels.” ‘They don’t read it,”
he said to me of Hsmond. “So you don’t mean to
. publish my work?” he said once to a publisher in an open
company. Other men keep their little troubles to them-
selves. I have heard even of authors who have declared
how all the publishers were running after their books; I
have heard some discourse freely of their fourth and fifth
editions ; I have known an author to boast of his thou-
sands sold in this country, and his tens of thousands in
America; but I never heard anyone else declare that no
one would read his chef-d’auvre, and that the world was
becoming tired of him. It was he who said, when
he was fifty, that a man past fifty should never write a
novel.

And yet, as I have said, he was from an early age fully
conscious of his own ability. That he was so is to be

1. BIOGRAPHICAL. 17

seen in the handling of many of his early works,—in
Barry Lyndon, for instance, and the Memoirs of
Mr. C. James Yellowplush. The sound is too certain
for doubt of that kind. But he had not then, nor did he
ever achieve that assurance of public favour which males
a man confident that his work will be successful. During
the years of which we are now speaking Thackeray was a
literary Bohemian in this sense,—that he never regarded
his own status as certain. While performing much of
the best of his life’s work he was not sure of his market,
not certain of his readers, his publishers, or his price ;
nor was he certain of himself,

It is impossible not to form some contrast between him
and Dickens as to this period of his life,—-a comparison
not as to their literary merits, but literary position.
Dickens was one year his junior in age, and at this
time, viz. 1837-38, had reached almost the zenith of his
reputation. Pickwick had been published, and Oliver
Twist and Nicholas Nickleby were being published. All
the world was talking about the young author who
was assuming his position with a confidence in his own
powers which was fully justified both by his present
and future success. It was manifest that he could
make, not only his own fortune, but that of his pub-
lishers, and that he was a literary hero bound to he
worshipped by all literary grades of men, down to the
* devils” of the printing-office. At that time, Thackeray,
the older man, was still doubting, still hesitating, still
struggling. Everyone then had accepted the name of
Charles Dickens. That of William Thackeray was hardly
known beyond the circle of those who are careful to
make themselves acquainted with such matters. It was
then the custom, more generally than it is at present, to

Cc

18 THACKERAY. [omap,

maintain anonymous writing in magazines. Now, if any-
thing of special merit be brought out, the name of the
author, if not published, is known. It was much less
so at the period in question; and as the world of readers
began to be acquainted with Jeames Yellowplush,
Catherine Hayes, and other heroes and heroines, the
names of the author had to be inquired for. JI remember
myself, when I was already well acquainted with the
immortal Jeames, asking who was the writer. The works
of Charles Dickens were at that time as well known to be
his, and as widely read in England, as those almost of
Shakespeare, | |

It will be said of course that this came from the earlier
popularity of Dickens. That is of course; but why
should it have been so? They had begun to make their
effort much at the same time; and if there was any
advantage in point of position as they commenced, it was
with Thackeray. It might be said that the genius of the
one was brighter than that of the other, or, at any rate, that
it was more precocious. But arter-judgment has, I think,
not declared either of the suggestions to be true. I will
make no comparison between two such rivals, who were so
distinctly different from each, and each of whom, within
so very short a period, has come to stand on a pedestal
so high,—the two exalted to so equal a vocation. And if
Dickens showed the best of his power early in life, so did
Thackeray the best of his intellect. In no display of
mental force did he rise above Barry Lyndon.. ‘I hardly
know how the teller of a narrative shall hope to mount
in simply intellectual faculty above the effort there.made.
Jn what then was the difference? Why was Dickens
already a great man when Thackeray was still a literary
Bohemian ?

.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 19

The answer is to be found not in the extent or in the
nature of the genius of either man, but in the condition
of mind,—which indeed may be read plainly in their
works by those who have eyes to see. The one was
steadfast, industrious, full of purpose, never doubting of
himself, always putting his best foot foremost and stand-
ing firmly on it when he got # there; with no inward
trepidation, with no moments in which he was half in-
clined to-think that this race was not for his winning, this
goal not to be reached by ‘his struggles, The sympathy
of friends was good to him, but he could have done
without it. The good opinion which he had of himself
was never shaken by adverse criticism ; and the criticism
on the other side, by which it was exalted, came from the
enumeration of the number of copies sold. He was a
firm reliant man, very little prone to change, who, when
he had discovered the nature of his own talent, ‘Knew how
to do the very best with it.

It may almost be said that Thackeray was the very
opposite of this. Unsteadfast, idle, changeable of pur-
pose, aware of his own intellect but not trusting it, no
man ever failed more generally than he to put his best
foot foremost. Full as his works are of pathos, full of
humour, full of love and charity, tending, as they always
do, to truth and honour and manly worth and womanly
modesty, excelling, as they seem to me to do, most other
written precepts that I know, they always seem to lack
something that might have been there. There is a touch
of -vagueness which indicates that his pen was not firm
while he was using it. He seems to me to have beén
dreaming ever of some high flight, and then to have told
himself, with a half-broken heart, that it was beyond his”
powerte soar up into’ those” bright regions. I cdn fancy

c2

ZU THACKERAY. [ CHAP,

as the sheets went from him every day he told himself,
in regard to every sheet, that it was a failure. Dickens
was quite sure of his sheets.

“TJ have got to make it shorter!” Then he would
put his hands in his pockets, and stretch himself, and
straighten the lines of his face, over which a smile would
come, as though this intimation from his editor were the
best joke in the world; and he would walk away, with
his heart bleeding, and every nerve in an agony. There
are none of us who want to have much of his work
shortened now.

In 1837 Thackeray married Isabella, daughter of Colonel
Matthew Shawe, and from this union there came three
daughters, Anne, Jane, and Harriet. The name of the
eldest, now Mrs. Richmond Ritchie, who has followed so
closely in her father’s steps, is a household word to the
world of novel readers; the second died as a child; the
younger lived to marry Leslie Stephen, who is too well
known for me to say more than that he wrote, the other
day, the little volume on Dr. Johnson in this series; but
she, too, has now followed her father. Of Thackeray’s
married life what need be said shall be contained in a
very few words. It was grievously unhappy; but the
misery of it came from God, and was in no wise due to
human fault. She became ill, and her mind failed her.
There was a period during which he would not believe
that her illness was more than illness, and then he clung
to her and waited on her with an assiduity of affection
which only made his task the more painful to him. At
last it became evident that she should live in the com-
panionship of some one with whom her life might be
altogether quiet, and she has since been domiciled with a
lady with whom she has heen happy. Thus she was,

1. | BIOGRAPHICAL. 21

after but a few years of married life, taken away from
him, and he became as it were a widower till the end of
his days.

At this period, and indeed for some years after his
marriage, his chief literary dependence was on frase7"s
Magazine. He wrote also at this time in the Vew Monthly
Maguzine. In 1840 he brought out his Puvis Sketch Book,
as to which he tells us by a notice printed with the
first edition, that half of the sketches had already been
published in various periodicals. Here he used the name
Michael Angelo Titmarsh, as he did also with the Journey
From Cornhill to Cairo. Dickens had called himself Boz,
and clung to the name with persistency as long as the
public would permit it. Thackeray’s affection for assumed
names was more intermittent, though I doubt whether he
used his own name altogether till it appeared on the title-
page of Vanity Fuir. About this time began his con-
nection with Punch, in which much of his best work
appeared. Looking back at our old friend as he used to
come out from week to week at this time, we can hardly
boast that we used to recognise how good the literary
pabulum was that was then given for our consumption.
We have to admit that the ordinary reader, as the ordinary
picture-seer, requires to be guided by a name. We are
moved to absolute admiration by a Raphael or a Hobbema,
but hardly till we have learned the name of the painter,
or, at any rate, the manner of his painting. Iam notsure
that all lovers of poetry would recognise a Lycidaus coming
from some hitherto unknown Milton. Gradually the good
picture or the fine poem makes its way into the minds of
a slowly discerning public. Punch, no doubt, ‘became
very popular, owing, perhaps, more to Leech, its artist,
than to any other single person. Gradually the world

29 ‘THACKERAY. - [orar,

of readers. began to know that there was a speviality of
humour to be. found in its pages,—fun and sense, satire
and good humour, compressed together in small literary
morsels as the nature of its columns required.. Gradually
the name of Thackeray as one of the band of brethren
was buzzed about, and gradually became known: as that
of the chief of the literary brothers. But during the years
in which. he did much for Punch, say from 1843 to 1853, he
was still struggling to make good his footing in literature.
They knew him well in the Punch office, and no doubt the
amount and regularity of the cheques from Messrs. Brad-
bury and Evans, the then and still owners of that happy
periodical, made him aware that he had found for himself
a, satisfactory career. In “a good day for himself, the
journal, and the world, Thackeray found Punch.” This
was said by his old friend Shirley Brooks, who himself
lived to be editor of the paper and died in harness, and
was said most truly. Punch was more congenial to him,
and no doubt more generous, than Fraser. There was still
something of the literary Bohemian about him, but not as
it had been before. He was still unfixed, looking out for
some higher career, not altogether satisfied to be no more
than one of an anonymous band of brothers, even though
the brothers were the brothers of Punch. We can only
imagine what were his thoughts as to himself and that
other man, who was then known, as the great novelist of
the day,—of a rivalry with whom he was certainly con-
sclous. Punch was very much to him, but was not quite
enough. That must have been very elear to himself as
he meditated the beginning of Vanity Fair.

Of the ‘contributions to the periodical, the best known
now are The Snob Papers and The Ballads: of Police.:
man X. But. they were very numetous,.. Of Thackeray

wt] BIOGRAPHIOAL. 23

as a poet, or maker of verses, I will say a few words in a
chapter which will be devoted to his own so-called ballads.
Here it seems only necessary to remark that there was not
apparently any time in his career at which he began
to think seriously of appearing before the public as a
poet. Such was the intention early in their career with
many of our best known prose writers, with Milton, and
Goldsmith, and Samuel Johnson, with Scott, Macaulay,
and more lately with Matthew Arnold ; writers of verse
and prose who ultimately prevailed some in one direction,
and others in the other. Milton and Goldsmith have been
known best as poets, Johnson and Macaulay as writers of
prose. But with all of them there has been a distinct
effort in each art. Thackeray seems to have tumbled into
versification by accident ; writing it as amateurs do, a
little now and again for his own delectation, and to catch
the taste of partial friends. The reader feels that Thackeray
would not have begun to print his verses unless the oppor
tunity of doing so had been brought in his way by his doings
in prose. And yet he had begun to write verses when he
was very young ;—at Cambridge, as we have seen, when. he
contributed more to the fame of Timbuctoo than I think
even Tennyson has done,—and in his early years at Paris.
Here again, though he must-have felt the strength of his
own mingled humour and pathos, he always struck with
an uncertain note till he had gathered strength and con-
fidence by popularity. Good as they generally were, his
verses were accidents, written not as a writer writes who
claims to be a poet, but as though they might have been
the relaxation of a doctor or a barrister.

And so they were. When Thackeray first settled him-
self in London, to make his living among the magazines
and newspapers, I do not imagine that he counted much

on his poetic powers. He describes it all in his own
dialogue between the pen and the album.
“Since he,” says the pen, speaking of its master,
Thackeray :
Since he my faithful service did engage,

To follow him through his queer pilgrimage
I’ve drawn and written many a line and page.

Caricatures I scribbled have, and rhymes,
And dinner-cards, and picture pantomimes,
And many little children’s books at times.

I’ve writ the foolish fancy of his brain;
The aimless jest that, striking, hath caused pain ;
The idle word that he’d wish back again.

I’ve helped him to pen many a line for bread.

It was thus he thought of his work. There had been
caricatures, and rhymes, and many little children’s books ;
and then the lines written for his bread, which, except
that they were written for Punch, were hardly undertaken
with a more serious purpose. In all of it there was
ample seriousness, had he known it himself. What a tale
of the restlessness, of the ambition, of the glory, of the
misfortunes of a great country is given in the ballads of
Peter the French drummer! Of that brain so full of
fancy the pen had lightly written all the fancies. He
did not know it when he was doing so, but with that
word, fancy, he has described exactly the gift with which
his brain was specially endowed. If a writer be accurate,
or sonorous, or witty, or simply pathetic, he may, I think,
gauge his own powers. He may do so after experience
with something of certainty. But fancy is a gift which
the owner of it cannot measure, and the power of which,
when he is using it, he cannot himself understand.

There is the same lambent flame flickering over every-
thing he did, even the dinner-cards and the picture pan-
tomimes. He did not in the least know what he put
into those things. So it was with his verses. It was
only by degrees, when he was told of it by others, that
he found that they too were of infinite value to him in
his profession.

The Irish Sketch Book came out in 1843, in which he
used, but only half used, the name of Michael Angelo
Titmarsh. He dedicates it to Charles Lever, and in
signing the dedication gave his own name. “ Laying
aside,” he says, “for a moment the travelling title of
Mr. Titmarsh, let me acknowledge these favours in my own
name, and subscribe myself, &. &c., W. M. Thackeray.”
So he gradually fell into the declaration of his own identity.
In 1844 he made his journey to Turkey and Egypt,— From
Cornhill to Grand Catro, as he called it, still using the old
nom de plume, but again signing the dedication with his
own name. It was now made to the captain of the vessel
in which he encountered that famous white squall, in
describing which he has shown the wonderful power he
had over words.

In 1846 was commenced, in numbers, the novel which
first made his name well known to the world. This was
Vanity Fuir, a work to which it is evident that he
devoted all his mind. Up to this time his writings
had consisted of short contributions, chiefly of sketches,
each intended to stand by itself in the periodical to
which it was sent. Barry Lyndon had hitherto been
the longest; but that and Cutherine Hayes, and the
Hoggarty Diamond, though stories continued through
various numbers, had not as yet reached the dignity,—or
at any rate the length,—of a three-volume novel. But of

26 . THACKERAY. fous:

late novels had grown to be much longer than those of the
old well-known measure. Dickens had stretched his to
nearly double the length, and had published them in twenty
numbers, . The attempt had caught the public taste and
had been pre-eminently successful. The nature of thé
tale. as originated by him was altogether unlike that
to which the readers of modern novels had been used.
No plot, with an arranged catastrophe or dénotiment, was
necessary. Some untymg of the various knots of the
narrative no doubt were expedient, but these were of the
simplest kind, done with the view of giving an end to that
which might otherwise be endless. The adventures of a
Pickwick ox a, Nickleby required very little of a plot, and this
mode of telling a story, which: might be continued on
through any number of pages, as long as the characters were
interesting, met with approval. Thackeray, who had never
depended much on his plot in the shorter tales which he
had hitherto told, determined to adopt the same form in
his first great work, but with these changes ;—That as the
central character with Dickens had always been made
beautiful with unnatural virtue,—for who was ever so wn-
selfish as Pichwick, so manly and modest as Nicholas, or
so good a boy as Oliver 2—so should his centre of interest
be in every respect abnormally bad.

As to Thackeray’s reason for this,—or rather as to that
condition of mind which brought about this result,—I will
say something in a final chapter, in which I will en-
deavour to describe the nature and effect of his work genc-
rally. Here it will be necessary only to declare that, such
was the choice he now made of a subject in his first attempt
to rise out of a world of small literary contributions, into
the more assured position of the author of a work of
importance. We are aware that the monthly nurses of

1]. BIOGRAPHICAL. 27

periodical literature did not at first smile on the: effort.
The proprietors of magazines did not see their way to under-
ake Vanity Fair, and the publishers are said to have gene-
rally looked shy upon it. At last it was brought out in
numbers,—twenty-four numbers instead of twenty, as with
those, by Dickens,—under the guardian hands of Messrs.
Bradbury and Evans. This was completed in 1848, and
then it was that, at the age of thirty-seven, Thackeray first
achieved for himself a name and reputation through the
country. Before this he had been known at Fraser’s anc
at the Punch office. He was known at the Garrick Club,
and had become individually popular among literary men
in London. He had made many fast friends, and had
been, as it were, found out by persons of distinction.
But Jones, and Smith, and Robinson, in Liverpool, Man-
chester, and Birmingham, did not know him as they knew
Dickens, Carlyle, Tennyson, and Macaulay,—not as they
knew Landseer, or Stansfeld, or Turner; not as they
knew Macready, Charles Kean, or Miss Faucit. In
that year, 1848, his mame became common in the
memoirs of the time. On the 5th of June I find him
dining with Macready, to meet Sir J. Wilson, Panizzi,
Landseer, and others. A few days afterwards Macready
dined with him. “Dined with Thackeray, met the Gordons,
Kenyons, Procters, Reeve, Villiers, Evans, Stansfeld, and
saw Mrs. Sartoris and 8. C. Dance, White, H. Goldsmid,
in the evening.” Again; “Dined with Forster, having
called and taken up Brookfield, met Rintoul, Kenyon,
Procter, Kinglake, Alfred Tennyson, Thackeray.” Macready
was very accurate in jotting down the nameg of those
he entertained, who entertained him, or were entertained
with him. Vanity Fair was coming out, and Thackeray
had hécome one of the personages in literary society.

28 THACKERAY. Tomar.

Inthe January number of 1848 the Edinburgh Review
had an article on Thackeray’s works generally as they
were then known. It purports to combine the Irish
Sketch Book, the Journey from Cornhill to Grand Cairo,
and Vanity Fair as far as it had then gone; but it
does in truth deal chiefly with the literary merits of the
latter. I will quote a passage from the article, as proving
in regard to Thackeray’s work an opinion which was well
founded, and as telling the story of his life as far as it
was then known ;

“Full many a valuable truth,” says the reviewer,
“has been sent undulating through the air by men who
have lived and died unknown. At this moment the
rising generation are supplied with the best of their
mental aliment by writers whose names are a dead letter
to the mass; and among the most remarkable of these
is Michael Angelo Titmarsh, alias William Makepeace
Thackeray, author of the Irish Sketch Book, of A Journey
from Cornhill to Grand Cairo, of Jeames’s Diary, of The
Snob Papers in Punch, of Vanity Fuir, ete. ete.

“Mr, Thackeray is now about thirty-seven years of
age, of a good family, and originally intended for the
bar. He kept seven or eight terms at Cambridge, but
left the university without taking a degree, with the
view of becoming an artist; and we well remember,
ten or twelve years ago, finding him day after day
engaged in copying pictures in the Louvre, in order to
qualify himself for his intended profession. It may be
doubted, however, whether any degree of assiduity would
have enabled him to excel in the money-making branches,
for his talent was altogether of the Hogarth kind, and
was principally remarkable in the pen-and-ink sketches
of character and situation, which he dashed off for the

| BIOGRAPHICAL. 29

amusement of his friends. At the end of two or three
years of desultory application he gave up the notion of
becoming a painter, and took to literature. He set up
and edited with marked ability a weekly journal, on the
plan of The Atheneum and Literary Gazette, but was
unable to compete successfully with such long-established
rivals. He then became a regular man of letters,—that
is, he wrote for respectable magazines and newspapers,
until the attention attracted to his contributions in
Frasers Magazine and Puneh emboldened him to start
on his own account, and risk an independent publication.”
Then follows a eulogistic and, as I think, a correct
criticism on the book as far as it had gone. There
are a few remarks perhaps a little less eulogistic as to
some of his minor writings, The Snob Papers in particular ;
and at the end there is a statement with which I think
we shall all now agree; “A writer with such a pen and
pencil as Mr. Thackeray’s is an acquisition of real and
high value in our literature.”

The reviewer has done his work in a tone friendly to
the author, whom he knew,’—as indeed it may be said
that this little book will be written with the same
feeling, but the public has already recognised the
truth of the review generally. There can be no doubt
that Thackeray, though he had hitherto been but a con-
tributor of anonymous pieces to periodicals,—to what is
generally considered as merely the ephemeral literature of
the month,—had already become effective on the tastes
and morals of readers. Affectation of finery; the vul-
garity which apes good breeding but never approaches it ;

* The article was written by Abraham Hayward, who is still

with us, and was no doubt instigated by a desire to assist
Thackeray in his struggle upwards, in which it sueceeded.

30 THACKERAY. ° (CHAP,

dishonest gambling, whether with dice or with railway
shares; and that low taste for literary excitement which
is gratified by mysterious murders and Old Bailey exe-
eutions had already received condign punishment from
Yellowplush, Titmarsh, Fitzboodle, and Ikey Solomon.
Under all those names Thackeray had plied his trade as a
satirist. Though the truths, as the reviewer said, had
been merely sent undulating through the air, they had
already become effective,

Thackeray had now become a personage,—one of the
recognised stars of the literary heaven of the day. It
was an honour to know him; and we may well believe
that the givers of dinners were proud to have him among
their guests. He had opened his oyster,—with his pen,
an achievement which he cannot be said to have accom-
plished until Vanity Fair had come out. In inquiring
about him from those who survive him, and knew him
well in those days, I always hear the same account. “If I
could only tell you the impromptu lines which fell from
him!” “If I had only kept the drawings from his
pen, which used to be chucked about as though they
were worth nothing!” “If I could only remember the
drolleries !” Had they been kept, there might now be
many volumes of these sketches, as to which the reviewer
says that their talent was “altogether of the Hogarth
kind.” Could there be any kind more valuable? Like
Hogarth, he could always make his picture tell his
story; though, unlike Hogarth, he had not learned.
to draw. I have had sent to me for my inspection
an album of drawings and letters, which, in the course
of twenty years, from 1829 to 1849, were despatched
from Thackeray.to his old-friend Edward Fitzgerald.
Looking at. the wit displayed in the drawings,- I. feel:

a BIOGRAPHICAL. 31

inclined to say that had he persisted he would have been
a second Hogarth. There is a series of ballet scenes,
in which “Flore et Zephyr” are the two chief performers,
which for expression and drollery exceed anything that
I know of the kind. The set in this book are litho-
graphs, which were published, but I do not remember
to have seen them elsewhere. There are still among
us many wno knew him well ;—Edward Fitzgerald and
George Venables, James Spedding and Kinglake, Mrs,
Procter,—the widow of Barry Cornwall, who loved him
well,—and Monckton Milnes, as he used to be, whose
touching lines written just after Thackeray’s death will
close this volume, Frederick Pollock and Frank Fladgate,
John Blackwood and William Russell,—and they all tell
thesame story. Though he so rarely talked, as good talkers
do, and was averse to sit down to work, there were always
falling from his mouth and pen those little pearls. Among
the friends who had been kindest and dearest to him in
the days of his strugglings he once mentioned three to me,
—Matthew Higgins, or Jacob Omnium as he was more
popularly called; William Stirling, who became Sir
William Maxwell; and Russell Sturgis, who is now the
senior partner in the great house of Barings. Alas, only
the last of these three is left among us! Thackeray was a
man of no great power of conversation. I doubt whether
he ever shone in what is called general society. He was
not a man to be valuable at a dinner-table as a good
talker. It was when there were but two or three together
that he was happy himself and made others happy; and
then it would rather be from some special piece of
drollery that the joy of the moment would come, than
from the discussion of ordinary topics. After so many
years his old friends remember the fag-ends of .the
doggerel lines which used to drop from | without any

32 THACKERAY. (cHaP,

effort on all occasions of jollity. And though he could
be very sad,—laden with melancholy, as I think must
have been the case with him always,—the feeling of fun
would quickly come to him, and the queer rhymes would
be poured out as plentifully as the sketches were made.
Here is a contribution which I find hanging in the memory
of an old friend, the serious nature of whose literary
labours would certainly have driven such lines from his
mind, had they not at the time caught fast hold of him;

In the romantic little town of Highbury

My father kept a circulatin’ library ;

He followed in his youth that man immortal, who
Conquered the Frenchmen on the plains of Waterloo.
Mamma was an inhabitant of Drogheda,

Very good she was to darn and to embroider.

In the famous island of Jamaica,

For thirty years I’ve been a sugar-baker;

And here I sit, the Muses’.’appy vot’ry,

A cultivatin’ every kind of po’try.

There may, perhaps, have been a mistake in a line, but
the poem has been handed down with fair correctness over
a period of forty years. He was always versifying. He
once owed me five pounds seventeen shillings and six-
pence, his share of a dinner bill at Richmond. He sent
me a cheque for the amount in rhyme, giving the proper
financial document on the second half of a sheet of note
paper. I gave the poem away as an autograph, and now
forget the lines. This was all trifling, the reader will say.
No doubt. Thackeray was always trifling, and yet always
serious. In attempting to understand his character it is
necessary for you to bear within your own mind the idea that
he was always, within his own bosom, encountering melan-
choly with buffoonery, and meanness with satire, The
very spirit of burlesque dwelt within him,—a spirit which

@

1.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 83

does not see the grand the less because of the travesties
which it is always engendering.

In his youthful,—all but boyish,—days in London,
he delighted to “put himself up” at the Bedford, in
Covent Garden. Then in his early married days he lived
in Albion Street, and from thence went to Great Coram
Street, till his household there was broken up by his
wife’s illness. He afterwards took lodgings in St. James’s
Chambers, and then a house in Young Street, Kensington.
Here he lived from 1847, when he was achieving his great
triumph with Vanity Fair, down to 1853, when he re-
moved to a house which he bought in Onslow Square.
In Young Street there had come to lodge opposite to him
an Irish gentleman, who, on the part of his injured country,
felt very angry with Thackeray. The Irish Sketch Book
had not been complimentary, nor were the descriptions
which Thackeray had given generally of Irishmen; and there
was extant an absurd idea that in his abominable heroine
Catherine Hayes he had alluded to Miss Catherine Hayes
the lrish singer. Word was taken to Thackeray that this
Irishman intended to come across the street and avenge
his country on the calumniator’s person. Thackeray imme-
diately called upon the gentleman, and it is said that the
visit was pleasant to both parties. There certainly was no
blood shed.

He had now succeeded,—in 1848,—in making for him-
self a standing as a man of letters, and an income. What
was the extent of his income I have no means of saying ;
nor is it a subject on which, as I think, inquiry should
be made. But he was not satisfied with his position.
He felt it to be precarious, and he was always thinking of
what he owed to his two girls. That arbitrium vopularis
aure on which he depended for his daily bread was not

D

regarded by him with the confidence which it deserved.
He did not probably know how firm was the hold he had.
obtained of the public ear. At any rate he was anxious,
and endeavoured to secure for himself a permanent income
in the public service. He had become by this time
acquainted, probably intimate, with the Marquis of
Clanricarde, who was then Postmaster-General, In 1848
there fell a vacancy in the situation of Assistant-Secretary
at the General Post Office, and Lord Clanricarde either
offered it to him or promised to give it to him. The
Postmaster-General had the disposal of the place,—but was
not altogether free from control in the matter. When
he made known his purpose at the Post Office, he was
met by an assurance from the officer next under him that
the thing could not be done. The services were wanted
of a man who had had experience in the Post Office ;
and, moreover, it was necessary that the feelings of other
gentlemen should be consulted. Men who have been
serving in an office many years do not like to see even a
man of genius put over their heads. In fact, the office
would have been up in arms at such an injustice.
Lord Clanricarde, who in a matter of patronage was not
scrupulous, was still a good-natured man and amenable.
He attempted to befriend his friend till he found that
it was impossible, and then, with the best grace in the
world, accepted the official nominee that was offered to
him. :

It may be said that had Thackeray succeeded in that
attempt he would surely have ruined himself. No man
can be fit for the management and performance of special
work who has learned nothing of it before his thirty-
seventh year; and no man could have been less so than
Thackeray. There are men who, though they be not fit,
are disposed to learn their lesson and make themselves as

1] BIOGRAPHICAL. 3h

fit as possible. Such cannot be said to have been the case
with this man. For the special duties which he would
have been called upon to perform, consisting to a great
extent of the maintenance of discipline over a large
body of men, training is required, and the service would
have suffered for awhile under any untried elderly tiro.
Another man might have put himself into harness.
Thackeray never would have done so. The details of
his work after the first month would have been inex-
pressibly wearisome to him. To have gone into the city,
and to have remained there every day from eleven till
five, would have been all but impossible to him. He
would not have done it. And then he would have been
tormented by the feeling that he was taking the pay and
not doing the work. There is a belief current, not confined
to a few, that a man may be a Government Secretary
with a generous salary, and have nothing to do. The
idea is something that remains to us from the old
days of sinecures. If there be now remaining places so
pleasant, or gentlemen so happy, I do not know them.
Thackeray’s notion of his future duties was probably
very vague. He would have repudiated the notion that
he was looking for a sinecure, but no doubt considered
that the duties would be easy and light. It is not too
much to assert, that he who could drop his pearls as I
have said above, throwing them wide cast without an
effort, would have found his work as Assistant-Secretary
at the General Post Office to be altogether too much for
him. And then it was no doubt his intention to join
literature with the Civil Service. He had been taught to
regard the Civil Service as.easy, and had counted upon
himself as able to add it to his novels, and his work with
his Punch brethren, and to his contributions generally to
the literature of the day. He might have done so. could

36 THACKERAY. forap.

he have risen at five, and have sat at his private desk for
three hours before he began his official routine at the
public one. A capability for grinding, an aptitude for
continuous task work, a disposition to sit in one’s chair as
though fixed to it by cobbler’s wax, will enable a man in
the prime of life to go through the tedium of a second
day’s work every day ; but of all men Thackeray was the
last to bear the wearisome perseverance of such a life.
Some more or less continuous attendance at his office he
must have given, and with it would have gone Punch
and the novels, the ballads, the burlesques, the essays, the
lectures, and the monthly papers full of mingled satire and
tenderness, which have left tous that Thackeray which we
could so ill afford to lose out of the literature of the nine-
teenth century. And there would have remained to the
Civil Service the memory of a disgraceful job.

He did not, however, give up the idea of the Civil
Service. In a letter to his American friend, My. Reed,
dated 8th November, 1854, he says; “ The secretaryship
of our Legation at Washington was vacant the other day,
and I instantly asked for it; but in the very kindest letter
Lord Clarendon showed how the petition was impossible.
First, the place was given away. Next, it would not be
fair to appoint out of the service. But the first was an
excellent reason ;—not a doubt of it.” The validity of the
second was probably not so apparent to him as it is to one
who has himself waited long for promotion. “So if ever
I come,” he continues, “as I hope and trust to do this
time next year, it must be in my own coat, and not the
Queen’s.” Certainly in his own coat, and not in the
Queen’s, must Thackeray do anything by which he could
mend his fortune or make his reputation. There never
was 4 man less fit for the Queen’s coat,

I,J BIOGRAPHICAL. 37

Nevertheless he held strong ideas that much was due
by the Queen’s ministers to men of letters, and no doubt
had his feelings of slighted merit, because no part of the
debt due was paid to him. In 1850 he wrote a letter to
The Morning Chronicle, which has since been republished,
in which he alludes to certain opinions which had been
put forth in The Examiner. “I don’t see,” he says, “ why
men of letters should not very cheerfully coincide with
Mr. Examiner in accepting all the honours, places, and
prizes which they can get. The amount of such as will
be awarded to them will not, we may be pretty sure,
impoverish the country much; and if it is the custom of
the State to reward by money, or titles of honour, or stars
and garters of any sort, individuals who do the country
service,—and if individuals are gratified at having ‘ Sir’ or
‘My lord’ appended to their names, or stars and ribbons
hooked on to their coats and waistcoats, as men most
undoubtedly are, and as their wives, families, and relations
are,—there can be no reason why men of letters should not
have the chance, as well as men of the robe or the sword ;
or why, if honour and money are good for one profession,
they should not be good for another. No man in other
callings thinks himself degraded by receiving a reward
from his Government; nor, surely, need the literary man
be more squeamish about pensions, and ribbons, and titles,
than the ambassador, or general, or judge. Every European
state but ours rewards its men of letters. The American
Government gives them their full share of its small
patronage ; and if Americans, why not Englishmen ?”

In this a great subject is discussed which would be
too long for these pages; but I think that there now
exists a feeling that literature can herself, for herself,
produce a rank as effective as any that a Queen’s minister

38 THACKERAY. Lowar.

ean bestow. Surely it would be a repainting of the lily,
an adding a flavour to the rose, a gilding of refined gold
to create to-morrow a Lord Viscount Tennyson, a Baron
Carlyle, or a Right Honourable Sir Robert Browning.
And as for pay and pension, the less the better of it for
any profession, unless so far as it may be payment made
for work done. Then the higher the payment the better, in
literature as in all other trades. It may be doubted even
whether a special rank of its own be good for literature,
such as that which is achieved by the happy possessors of
the forty chairs of the Academy in France. Even though
they had an angel to make the choice,—which they have
not,—that angel would do more harm to the excluded than
good to the selected.

Pendennis, Esmond, and The Newcomes followed
Vanity Fatr,—not very quickly indeed, always at an
interval of two years,—in 1850, 1852, and 1854. As I
purpose to devote a separate short chapter, or part of a
chapter, to each of these, I need say nothing here of
their special merits or demerits. Hsmond was brought
out asa whole. The others appeared in numbers. “ He
lisped in numbers, for the numbers came.” It is a mode
of pronunciation in literature by no means very articulate,
but easy of production and lucrative. But though easy
it is seductive, and leads to idleness, An author by means
of it can raise money and reputation on his book before he
has written it, and when the pang of parturition is over
in regard to one part, he feels himself entitled to a period
of ease because the amount required for the next division
will occupy him only half the month. This to Thackeray
was so alluring. that the entirety of the final half was not
always given to the task. His self-reproaches and bemoan-
ings when sometimes the day for reappearing would come |

te | BIOGRAPHICAL. 89

terribly nigh, while yet the necessary amount of copy was far
from being ready, were often very ludicrous and very sad ;
—ludicrous because he never told of his distress without
adding to it something of ridicule which was irresistible,
and sad because those who loved him best were aware
that physical suffering had already fallen upon him, and
that he was deterred by illness from the exercise of con-
tinuous energy. I myself did not know him till after the
time now in question. My acquaintance with him was
quite late in his life. But he has told me something of
it, and I have heard from those who lived with him how
continual were his sufferings. In 1854, he says in one of
his letters to Mr. Reed,—the only private letters of his
which I know to have been published; “I am to-day
just out of bed after another, about the dozenth, severe
fit of spasms which I have had this year. My book
would have been written but for them.” His work was
always going on, but though not fuller of matter,—that
would have been almost impossible,—would have been
better in manner had he been delayed neither by suffering
nor by that palsying of the energies whivh suffering
produces.

This ought to have been the happiest period of his life,
and should have been very happy. He had become
fairly easy in his circumstances. He had succeeded in his
work, and had made for himself a great name. He was
fond of popularity, and especially anxious to be loved
by a small circle of friends. These good things he had
thoroughly achicved. Immediately after the publication
of Vanity Fair he stood high among the literary heroes
of his country, and had endeared himself especially to a
special knot of friends. His face and figure, his six feet
four in height, with his flowing hair, already nearly gray,

40 THACKERAY. [cHap,

and his broken nose, his broad forehead and ample chest,
encountered everywhere either love or respect; and his
daughters to him were all the world,—the ‘bairns of whom
he says, at the end of the White Squall ballad ;

I thought, as day was breaking,

My little girls were waking,

And smiling, and making

A prayer at home for me.

Nothing could have been more tender or endearing than
his relations with his children. But still there was a
skeleton in his cupboard,—or rather two skeletons. His
home had been broken up by his wife’s malady, and his
own health was shattered. When he was writing Pen-
dennis, in 1849, he had a severe fever, and then those
Spasms came, of which four or five years afterwards he
wrote to Mr. Reed. His home, as a home should be, was
never restored to him,—or his health. Just at that period
of life at which a man generally makes a happy exchange
in taking his wife’s drawing-room in lieu of the smoking-
room of his club, and assumes those domestic ways of
living which are becoming and pleasant for matured years,
that drawing-room and those domestic ways were closed
against him. The children were then no more than
babies, as far as society was concerned,—things to kiss
and play with, and make a home happy if they could
only have had their mother with them. I have no doubt
there were those who thought that Thackeray was very
jolly under his adversity. Jolly he was. It was the
manner of the man to be so,—if that continual playful-
ness which was natural to him, lying over a melancholy
which was as continual, be compatible with jollity. He
laughed, and ate, and drank, and threw his pearls about
with miraculous profusion. But I fancy that he was far

1] BIOGRAPHICAL. Al

from happy. I remember once, when I was young, receiv-
ing advice as to the manner in which I had better spend
my evenings ; I was told that I ought to go home, drink
tea, and read good books. It was excellent advice, but I
found that the reading of good books in solitude was not
an occupation congenial tome. It was so I take it, with
Thackeray. He did not like his lonely drawing-room, and
went back to his life among the clubs by no means with
contentment.

In 1853, Thackeray having then his own two girls to
provide for, added a third to his family, and adopted
Amy Crowe, the daughter of an old friend, and sister of
the well-known artist now among us. How it came to
pass that she wanted a home, or that this special home
suited her, if would be unnecessary here to tell even if I
knew. But that he did give a home to this young lady,
making her in all respects the same as another daughter,
should be told of him. He was a man who liked to
broaden his back for the support of others, and to make
himself easy under such burdens. In 1862, she married a
Thackeray cousin, a young officer with the Victoria Cross,
Edward Thackeray, and went out to India,—where she
died.

In 1854, the year in which The Newcomes came out,
Thackeray had broken his close alliance with Punch. In
December of that year there appeared from his pen an
article in The Quarterly on John Leech’s Pictures of Life
and Character. It is a rambling discourse on picture-
illustration in general, full of interest, but hardly good as a
criticism,—a portion of literary work for which he was not
specially fitted. In it he tells us how Richard Doyle, the
artist, had given up his work for Punch, not having been
able, as a Roman Catholic, to endure the skits which, at

42 THACKERAY. fonae,

that time, were appearing in one number after another
against what was then called Papal aggression. The
reviewer,—Thackeray himself,—then tells us of the
secession of himself from the board of brethren.
*‘ Another member of Mr. Punch’s cabinet, the biographer
of Jeames, the author of The Snob Pupers, resigned his
functions, on account of Mr. Punch’s assaults upon the
present Emperor of the French nation, whose anger
Jeames thought it was unpatriotic to arouse.” How hard
it must be for Cabinets to agree! This man or that is
sure to have some pet conviction of his own, and the
better the man the stronger the conviction! Then the
reviewer went on in favour of the artist of whom he
was specially speaking, making a comparison which must
at the time have been odious enough to some of the
brethren. ‘There can be no blinking the fact that in
Mr. Punch’s Cabinet John Leech is the right-hand man.
Fancy a number of Punch without Leech’s pictures!
What would you give for it?” Then he breaks out into
strong admiration of that one friend,—perhaps with a
little disregard as to the feelings of other friends.* This
Critical Review, if it may properly be so called,—at any
rate it 1s so named as now published,—is to be found in
our author’s collected works, in the same volume with
Catherine. It is there preceded by another, from Zhe
Westminster Review, written fourteen years earlier, on

* For a week there existed at the Punch office a grudge against
Thackeray in reference to this awkward question: “What would
you give for your Punch without John Leech ?” Then he asked
the confraternity to dinner,—more Thackerayano,—and the con-
fraternity came. Who can doubt but they were very jolly over
the little blunder? For years afterwards Thackeray was a guest
at the well-known Punch dinner, though he was no longer one of
the contributors.

1] ' BIOGRAPHICAL, 43

The Genius of Cruikshank. This contains a descriptive
catalogue of Cruikshank’s works up to that period, and is
interesting from the piquant style in which it is written.
I fancy that these two are the only efforts of the kind
which he made,—and in both he dealt with the two
great caricaturists of his time, he himself being, in the
imaginative part of a caricaturist’s work, equal in power
to elther of them.

We now come to a phase of Thackeray’s life in which
he achieved a remarkable success, attributable rather to
his fame as'a writer than to any particular excellence in
the art which he then exercised. He took upon himself
the functions of a lecturer, being moved to do so by a
hope that he might thus provide a sum of money for the
future sustenance of his children. No doubt he had been
advised to this course, though I do not know from whom
specially the advice may have come. Dickens had already
considered the subject, but had not yet consented to read
in public for money on his own account. John Forster,
writing of the year 1846, says of Dickens and the then only
thought-of exercise of a new profession ; “I continued to
oppose, for reasons to be stated in their place, that which
he had set his heart upon too strongly to abandon, and
which I still can wish he had preferred to surrender with
all that seemed to be its enormous gain.” And again he
says, speaking of a proposition which had been made to
Dickens from the town of Bradford; “ At first this was
entertained, but was abandoned, with some reluctance,
upon the argument that to become publicly a reader must
alter, without improving, his position publicly as a writer,
and that it was a change to be justified only when the
higher calling should have failed of the old success.”
The meaning of this was that the money to be made

Ad THACKERAY. - Tomar.

would be sweet, but that the descent to a profession
which was considered to be lower than that of literature
itself would carry with it something that was bitter. It
was as though one who had sat on the woolsack as Lord
Chancellor should raise the question whether for the sake
of the income attached to it, he might, without disgrace,
occupy a seat on a lower bench; as though an architect
should consider with himself the propriety of making his
fortune as a contractor; or the head of a college lower his
dignity, while he increased his finances, by taking pupils.
When such discussions arise, money generally carries the
day,—and should doso. When convinced that money may
be earned without disgrace, we ought to allow money to
carry the Jay. When we talk of sordid gain and filthy
lucre, we are generally hypocrites. If gains be sordid
and lucre filthy, where is the priest, the lawyer, the
doctor, or the man of literature, who does not wish for
dirty hands? An income, and the power of putting by
something for old age, something for those who are to
come after, is the wholesome and acknowledged desire of
all professional men. Thackeray having children, and
being gifted with no power of making his money go very
far, was anxious enough on the subject. We may say
now, that had he confined himself to his pen, he would
not have wanted while he lived, but would have left but
little behind him. That he was anxious we have seen,
by his attempts to subsidise his literary gains by a
Government office. I cannot but think that had he under-
taken public duties for which he was ill qualified, and
received a salary which he could hardly have earned, he
would have.done less for his fame than by reading to the
public. Whether he did that well or ill, he did it well
enough for the money. The people who heard him, and

1] BIOGRAPHICAL AB

who paid for their seats, were satisfied with their bargain,
-—as they were also in the case of Dickens ; and I venture
to say that in becoming publicly a reader, neither did
Dickens or Thackeray “alter his position as a writer,”
and “that it was a change to be justified,” though the
success of the-old calling had in no degree waned. What
Thackeray did enabled him to leave a comfortable income
for his children, and one earned honestly, with the full
approval of the world around him.

Having saturated his mind with the literature of
Queen Anne’s time,—not probably in the first instance
as a preparation for Esmond, but in such a way as to
induce him to create an Esmond,—he took the authors
whom he knew so well as the subject for his first series
of lectures. He wrote Zhe English Humourists of the
Highteenth Century in 1851, while he must have been
at work on Esmond, and first delivered the course at
Willis’s Rooms in that year. He afterwards went with
these through many of our provincial towns, and then
carried them to the United States, where he delivered
them to large audiences in the winter of 1852 and 1853.
Some few words as to the merits of the composition I
wili endeavour to say in another place. I myself never
heard him lecture, and can therefore give no opinion of
the performance. That which I have heard from others
has been very various. It is, I think, certain that he had
none of those wonderful gifts of elocution which made ita
pleasure to listen to Dickens, whatever he read or what-
ever he said ; nor had he that power of application by
using which his rival taught himself with accuracy the -
exact effect to be given to every word. The rendering
of a piece by Dickens was composed as an oratorio is com-
posed, and was then studied by heart as music is studied

| CHAP

And the piece was all given by memory, without any
looking at the notes or words. There was nothing of
this with Thackeray. But the thing read was in itself of
great interest to educated people. The words were given
clearly, with sufficient intonation for easy understanding,
so that they who were willing to hear something from
him felt on hearing that they had received full value for
their money. At any rate, the lectures were successful.
The money was made,—and was kept.

He came from his first trip to America to his new house
in Onslow Square, and then published Zhe Newcomes.
This, too, was one of his great works, as to which I
shall have to speak hereafter. Then, having enjoyed his
success in the first attempt to lecture, he prepared a
second series. He never essayed the kind of reading
which with Dickens became so wonderfully popular.
Dickens recited portions from his well-known works.
Thackeray wrote his lectures expressly for the purpose.
They have since been added to his other literature,
but they were prepared as lectures. The second series
were The Four Georges. In a lucrative point of view
they were even more successful than the first, the sum
of money realised in the United States having been
considerable. In England they were less popular, even
if better attended, the subject chosen having been dis-
tasteful to many. There arose the question whether
too much freedom had not been taken with an office
which, though it be no longer considered to be founded
on divine right, is still as sacred as can be anything that
is human. If there is to remain among us a sovereign,
that sovereign, even though divested of political power,
should’ be endowed with all that personal respect can
give. If we wish ourselves to be high, we should treat

1. | BIOGRAPHICAL. 44

that which is over us as high, And this should not de-
pend altogether on personal character, though we know,
—as we have reason to know,—how much may be added
to the firmness of the feeling by personal merit. The
respect of which we speak should, in the strongest degree,
be a possession of the Immediate occupant, and will natu-
rally become dim,—or perhaps be exaggerated,—in regard
to the past, as history or fable may tell of them. No one
need hesitate to speak his mind of King John, let him be
ever so strong a stickler for the privileges of majesty,
But there are degrees of distance, and the throne of which
we wish to preserve the dignity seems to be assailed when
unmeasured evil is said of one who has sat there within
our own memory. There would seem to each of us to be
a personal affront were a departed relative delineated with
all those faults by which we must own that even our near
relatives have been made imperfect. Itis a general convic-
tion as to this which so frequently turns the biography of
those recently dead into mere eulogy. The fictitious charity
which is enjoined by the de mortuis nil nist bonum
banishes truth. The feeling of which I speak almost leads
me at this moment to put down my pen. And, if so much
be due to all subjects, is less due to a sovereign 3
Considerations such as these diminished, I think, the
popularity of Thackeray’s second series of lectures; or,
rather, not their popularity, but the estimation in which
they were held. On this head he defended himself more
than once very gallantly, and had a great deal to sey on
his side of the question. “Suppose, for example, in
America,—in Philadelphia or in New York,—that I had
spoken about George IV. in terms of praise and affected
reverence, do you believe they would have hailed his
name with cheers, or have heard it with anything of

48 THACKERAY. Tonap,

respect?” And again; “ We degrade our own honour
and the sovereign’s by unduly and unjustly praising him ;
and the mere slaverer and flatterer is one who comes
forward, as it were, with flash notes, and pays with false
coin his tribute to Ceasar. I don’t disguise that I feel
somehow on ny trial here for loyalty,—for honest English
feeling.” This was said by Thackeray at a dinner at
Edinburgh, in 1857, and shows how the matter rested on
his mind. Thackeray’s loyalty was no doubt true enough,
but was mixed with but little of reverence. He was one
who revered modesty and innocence rather than power,
against which he had in the bottom of his heart something
of republican tendency. His leaning was no doubt of the
more manly kind. But in what he said at Edinburgh he
hardly hit the nail on the head. No one had suggested
that he should have said good things of a king which he
did not believe to be true. The question was whether it
may not be well sometimes for us to hold our tongues.
An American literary man, here in England, would not
lecture on the morals of Hamilton, on the manners of
General Jackson, on the general amenities of President
Johnson.

In 1857 Thackeray stood for Oxford, in the liberal
interest, in opposition to Mr. Cardwell. He had heen
induced to do this by his old friend Charles Neate, who
himself twice sat for Oxford, and died now not many
months since. He polled 1,017 votes, against 1,070 by
Mr. Cardwell; and was thus again saved by his good
fortune from attempting to fill a situation in which he
would not have shone. There are, no doubt, many to
whom a seat in Parliament comes almost as the birthright
of a well-born and well-to-do English gentleman. They
go there with no more idea of’ shining than they do when

1.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 49

they are elected to a first-class club ;—hardly with more
idea of being useful. It is the thing to do, and the
House of Commons is the place where a man ought to
be—for a certain number of hours. Such men neither
succeed nor fail, for nothing is expected of them. From
such a one as Thackeray something would have been
expected, which would not have been forthcoming. He
was too desultory for regular work,—full of thought, but
too vague for practical questions. He could not have
endured to sit for two or three hours at a time with his
hat over his eyes, pretending to listen, as is the duty of a
good legislator. He was a man intolerant of tedium,
‘and in the best of his time impatient of slow work.
Nor, though his liberal feelings were very strong, were
his political convictions definite or accurate. He was a
man who mentally drank in much, feeding his fancy
hourly with what he saw, what he heard, what he read,
and then pouring it all out with an immense power of
amplification, But it would have been impossible for
him to study and bring home to himself the various
points of a complicated bill with a hundred and fifty
clauses. In becoming a man of letters, and taking that
branch of letters which fell to him, he obtained the
special place that was fitted for him. He was a round
peg inaround hole, There was no other hole which he
would have fitted nearly so well. But he had his moment
of political ambition, like others,—and paid a thousand
pounds for his attempt.

In 1857 the first number of The Virginians appeared,
and the last,—the twenty-fourth,—in October, 1859, This
novel, as all my readers are aware, is a continuance of
Esmond, and’ will be spoken of in its proper place. He
was then forty-eight years old, very gray, with much of

EB

50 THACKERAY. [ CHAP.

age upon him, which had come from suffering,—age
shown by dislike of activity and by an old man’s way of
thinking about many things,—speaking as though the
world were all behind him instead of before; but still
with a stalwart outward bearing, very erect in his gait,
and a countenance peculiarly expressive and capable of
much dignity. I speak of his personal appearance at
this time, because it was then only that I became
acquainted with him. In 1859 he undertook the last
great work of his life, the editorship of The Cornhill
Mugazine, a periodical set on foot by Mr. George Smith,
of the house of Smith and Elder, with an amount of
energy greater than has generally been bestowed upon:
such enterprises. It will be well remembered still how
much The Cornhill was talked about and thought of
before it first appeared, and how much of that thinking
and talking was due to the fact that Mr. Thackeray was
to edit it. Macmillan’s, I think, was the first of the
shilling magazines, having preceded The Cornhill by a
month, and it would ill become me, who have been
a humble servant to each of them, to give to either any
preference. But it must be acknowledged that a great
deal was expected from Zhe Cornhill, and I think it will
be confessed that it was the general opinion that a great
deal was given by it. Thackeray had become big enough
to give a special éclat to any literary exploit to which he
attached himself. Since the days of The Constitutional
he had fought his way up the ladder and knew how to
take his stand there with an assurance of success. When
it became known to the world of readers that a new
magazine was to appear under Thackeray’s editorship, the
world of readers was quite sure that there would be a
large sale, Of the first number over one hundred and ten

1. BIOGRAPHICAL. 51

thousand were sold, and of the second and third over
one hundred thousand. It is in the nature of such things
that the sale should fall off when the novelty is over.
People believe that a new delight has come, a new joy for
ever, and then find that the joy is not quite so perfect or
enduring as they had expected. Dut the commencement
of such enterprises may be taken as a measure of what
will follow. The magazine, either by Thackeray’s name
or by its intrinsic merits,—probably by both,—achieved
a great success. My acquaintance with him grew from
my having been one of his staff from the first.

About two months before the opening day I wrote to
him suggesting that he should accept from me a series of
four short stories on which I was engaged. I got back a
long letter in which he said nothing about my short
stories, but asking whether I could go to work at once
and let him have a long novel, so that it might begin
with the first number. At the same time I heard from
the publisher, who suggested some interesting little details
as to honorarium. The little details were very interesting,
but absolutely no time was allowed to me. It was re-
quired that the first portion of my book should be in the
printer’s hands within a month. Now it was my theory,—
and ever since this occurrence has been my practice,—
to see the end of my own work before the public should
see the commencement.' If I did this thing I must not
only abandon my theory, but instantly contrive a story, or

* I had begun an Irish story and half finished it, which would
reach just the required length. Would that do, asked. I was
civilly told that my Irish story would no doubt be charming, ~
but was not quite the thing that was wanted. Could I not begin
a new one,—English,—and if possible about clergymen? The
details were so interesting that had a couple of archbishops been
demanded, I should have produced them.

EQ

52 THACKERAY. TOHAP,

begin to write it before it was contrived, That was what
I did, urged by the interesting nature of the details. A
novelist cannot always at the spur of the moment make
his plot and create his characters who shall, with an
arranged sequence of events, live with a certain degree of
eventfil decorum, through that portion of their lives which
is to be portrayed. I hesitated, but allowed myself to be
allured to what I felt to be wrong, much dreading the
event. How seldom is it that theories stand the wear and
tear of practice! I will not say that the story which
came was good, but it was received with greater favour
than any I had written before or have written since. I
think that almost anything would have been then accepted
coming under Thackeray’s editorship.

I was astonished that work should be required in such
haste, knowing that much preparation had been made, and
that the service of almost any English novelist might have
been obtained if asked for in due time. It was my
readiness that was needed, rather than any other gift!
The riddle was read to me after a time. Thackeray had
himself intended to begin with one of his own great
novels, but had put it off till it was too late. Lovel the
W*dower was commenced at the same time with my own
story, but Lovel the Widower was not substantial enough
to appear as the principal joint at the banquet. Though
your guests will undoubtedly dine off the little delicacies
you provide for them, there must be a heavy saddle
of mutton among the viands prepared. I was the saddle
of mutton, Thackeray having omitted to get his joint down
to the fire in time enough, My fitness lay in my capacity
for quick roasting.

It may be interesting to give a list of the contributors
to the first number. My novel called Framley Parsonage

1] BIOGRAPHICAL. 53

came first. At this banquet the saddle of mutton was
served before the delicacies. Then there was a paper by
Sir John Bowring on The Chinese and Outer Barbarians.
The commencing number of Lovel the Widower followed.
George Lewes came next with his first chapters of
Studies in Animal Life. Then there was Father Prout’s
Inauguration Ode, dedicated to the author of Vanity Farr,
—which should have led the way. I need hardly say
that Father Prout was the Rev. F. Mahony. Then
followed Our Volunteers, by Sir John Burgoyne; A Man
of Letters of the Last Generation, by Thornton Hunt ;
The Search for Sir John Franklin, from a private journal
of an officer of the Fox, now Sir Allen Young; and The
First Morning of 1860, by Mrs. Archer Clive. The
number was concluded by the first of those Roundabout
Papers by Thackeray himself, which became so delightful
a portion of the literature of The Cornhill Maguztne.

It would be out of my power, and hardly interesting,
to give an entire list of those who wrote for The Cornhill
under Thackeray’s editorial direction. But I may name a
few, to show how strong was the support which he received.
Those who contributed to the first number I have named.
Among those who followed were Alfred Tennyson, Jacob
Omnium, Lord Houghton, William Russell, Mrs. Beecher
Stowe, Mrs. Browning, Robert Bell, George Augustus Sala,
Mrs. Gaskell, James Hinton, Mary Howitt, Jolin Kaye,
Charles Lever, Frederick Locker, Laurence Oliphant, John
Ruskin, Fitzjames Stephen, T. A. Trollope, Henry Thomp-
son, Herman Merivale, Adelaide Proctor, Matthew Arnold,
the present Lord Lytton, and Miss Thackeray, now Mrs.
Ritchie. Thackeray continued the editorship for two years
and four months, namely, up to April, 1862; but, as all
readers will remember, he continued to write for it till he

54. THACKERAY. [orar

died, the day before Christmas Day, in 1863. His last
contribution was, I think, a paper written for and pub-
lished in the November number, called, “ Strange to say
on Club Pupev,” in which he vindicated Lord Clyde from
the accusation of having taken the club stationery home
with him. It was not a great subject, for no one could
or did believe that the Field-Marshal had been guilty
of any meanness; but the handling of it has made it
interesting, and his indignation has made it beautiful.
The magazine was a great success, but justice compels
me to say that Thackeray was not a good editor. As he
would have been an indifferent civil servant, an indifferent
member of Parliament, so was he perfunctory as an
editor. It has sometimes been thought well to select a
popular literary man as an editor; first, because his name
will attract, and then with an idea that he who can write
well himself will be a competent judge of the writings of
others. The first may sell a magazine, but will hardly
make it good; and the second will not avail much, unless
the editor so situated be patient enough to read what is
sent to him. Of a magazine editor it is required that
he should be patient, scrupulous, judicious, but above
all things hard-hearted. JI think it may be doubted
whether Thackeray did bring himself to read the basketfuls
of manuscripts with which he was deluged, but he pro-
bably did, sooner or later, read the touching little private
notes by which they were accompanied,—the heartrending
appeals in «which he was told that if this or the other little
article couid be accepted and paid for, a starving family
might be saved from starvation fora month. He tells us
how he felt on receiving such letters in one of his Rouwnd-
about Papers, which he calls “ Thorns in the cushion.”
“How am I to know,” he says—‘ though to be sure I

1] BIOGRAPHICAL. 55

begin to know now,—as I take the letters off the tray,
which of those envelopes contains a real bona fide letter,
and which athorn? One of the best invitations this year
I mistook for a thorn letter, and kept it without opening.”
Then he gives the sample of a thorn letter. Itis from a
governess with a poem, and with a prayer for insertion and
payment. ‘‘ We have known better days, sir. I have a sick
and widowed mother to maintain, and little brothers and
sisters who look to me.” He could not stand this, and
the money would be sent, out of his own pocket, though
the poem might be—postponed, till happily it should be
lost.

From such material a good editor could not be made.
Nor, in truth, do I think that he did much of the editorial
work. JI had once made an arrangement, not with
Thackeray, but with the proprietors, as to some little
story. The story was sent back to me by Thackeray—
rejected. Virginibus puerisque/ That was the gist of
his objection. There was a project ina gentleman’s mind,
—as told in my story,—to run away with a married
woman! Thackeray’s letter was very kind, very regretful,
—full of apology for such treatment to such a contri-
butor. But—Virgintbus puerisque / I was quite sure that
Thackeray had not taken the trouble to read the story
himself. Some moral deputy had read it, and dis
approving, no doubt properly, of the little project to
which I have alluded, had incited the editor to use his
authority. That Thackeray had suffered when he wrote
it was easy to see, fearing that he was giving pain to one
he would fain have pleased. I wrote him a long letter in
return, as full of drollery as I knew how to make it. In
four or five days there came a reply in the same spirit,—
boiling over with fun. He had kept my letter by him, not

ole) THACKERAY, | CHAP.

daring to open it,—as he says that he did with that eligible
invitation. At last he had given it to one of his girls to
examine,—to see whether the thorn would be too sharp,
whether I had turned upon him with reproaches. A
man so susceptible, so prone to work by fits and starts, so
unmethodical, could not have been a good editor.

In 1862 he went into the new house which he had
built for himself at Palace Green. J remember well, while
this was still being bu'lt, how his friends used to discuss
his imprudence in building it. Though he had done well
with himself, and had made and was making a large income,
was he entitled to live in a house the rent of which could
not be counted at less than from five hundred to six
hundred pounds a year? Before he had been there two
years, he solved the question by dying,—when the house
was sold for two thousand pounds more than it had cost.
He himself, in speaking of his project, was wont to
declare that he was laying out his money in the best way
he could for the interest of his children ;—and it turned
out that he was right.

In 1863 he died in the house which he had built, and
at the period of his death was writing a new novel in
numbers, called Denis Duval, In The Cornhill, The
Adventures of Philip had appeared. This new enterprise
was destined for commencement on Ist January, 1864,
and, though the writer was gone, it kept its promise, as
far as it went. Three numbers, and what might probably
have been intended for half of a fourth, appeared. It
may be seen, therefore, that he by no means held to my
theory, that the author should see the end of his work
before the public sees the commencement. But neither
did Dickens or Mrs. Gaskell, both of whcm died with
stories not completed, which, when they died, were in the

1.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 87

course of publication. All the evidence goes against the
necessity of such precaution. Nevertheless, were I giving
advice to a tiro in novel writing, I should recommend it.

With the last chapter of Denis Duval was published
in the magazine a set of notes on the book, taken for the
most part from Thackeray’s own papers, and showing how
much collateral work he had given to the fabrication of
his novel. No doubt in preparing other tales, especially
Esmond, a very large amount of such collateral labour was
found necessary. He was a man who did very much of
such work, delighting to deal in little historical incidents.
They will be found in almost everything that he did, and
I do not know that he was ever accused of gross mistakes.
But I doubt whether on that account he should be called
a laborious man. He could go down to Winchelsea,
when writing about the little town, to see in which way
the streets lay, and to provide himself with what we call
local colouring. He could jot down the suggestions, as
they came to his mind, of his future story. There was an
irregularity in such work which was to his taste. His
very notes would be delightful to read, partaking of the
nature of pearls when prepared only for his own use.
But he could not bring himself to sit at his desk and do
an allotted task day after day. He accomplished what
must be considered as quite a sufficient life’s work. He
had about twenty-five years for the purpose, and that
which he has left is an ample produce for the time.
Nevertheless he was a man of fits and starts, who, not
having been in his early years drilled to method, never
achieved it in his career.

He died on the day before Christmas Day, as has been
said above, very suddenly, in his bed, early in the
morning, in the fifty-third year of his life. To those who

58 THACKERAY. [cHap.

saw him about in the world there seemed to be no reason
why he should not continue his career for the next
twenty years. But those who knew him were so well
aware of his constant sufferings, that, though they expected
no sudden catastrophe, they were hardly surprised when
it came. His death was probably caused by those spasms
of which he had complained ten years before, in his letter
to Mr. Reed. On the last day but one of the year, a
crowd of sorrowing friends stood over his grave as he was
laid to rest in Kensal Green ; and, as quickly afterwards
as it could be executed, a bust to his memory was put up
in Westminster Abbey. It is a fine work of art, by
Marochetti ; but, as a likeness, is, I think, less effective
than that which was modelled, and then given to the
Garrick Club, by Durham, and has lately been put into
marble, and now stands in the upper vestibule of the
club. Neither of them, in my opinion, give so accurate
an idea of the man asa statuette in bronze, by Bochm,
of which two or three copies were made. One of them is
in my possession. It has been alleged, in reference to
this, that there is something of a caricature in the lengthi-
ness of the figure, in the two hands thrust into the
trousers pockets, and in the protrusion of the chin. But
this feeling has originated in the general idea that any
face, or any figure, not made by the artist more beautiful
or more graceful than the original is an injustice. The
face must be smoother, the pose of the body must be more
dignified, the proportions more perfect, than in the person
represented, or satisfaction is not felt. Mr. Boehm has
certainly not flattered, but, as far as my eye ean judge, he
has given the figure of the man exactly as he used to
stand before us. J havea portrait of him in crayon, by
Samuel Lawrence, as like, but hardly as natural,

1] BIOGRAPHICAL. BD

A. little before his death Thackeray told me that he
had then succeeded in replacing the fortune which he had
lost as a young man. He had, in fact, done better, for he
left an income of seven hundred and fifty pounds behind
him.

It has been said of Thackeray that he was a cynic.
This has been said so generally, that the charge against
him has become proverbial. This, stated barely, leaves
one of two impressions on the mind, or perhaps the two
together,—that this cynicism was natural to his character
and came out in his life, or that it is the characteristic of
his writings. Of the nature of his writings generally, I
will speak in the last chapter of this little book. As to
his personal character as a cynic, I must find room to
quote the following first stanzas of the little poem which
appeared to his memory in Punch, from the pen of
Tom Taylor ;

He wasacynic! By his life all wrought
Of generous acts, mild words, and gentle ways;

His heart wide open to all kindly thought,
His hand so quick to give, his tongue to praise!

He was acynic! You might read it writ

In that broad brow, crowned with its silver hair;
In those blue eyes, with childlike candour lit,

zn that sweet smile his lips were wont to wear!

He was a cynic! By the love that clung
About him from his children, friends, and kin;
By the sharp pain light pen and gossip tongue
Wrought in him, chafing the soft heart within!

The spirit and nature of the man have been caught
here with absolute truth, A public man should of
course be judged from his public work. If he wrote as a
cynic,—a point which I will not discuss here,—it may be

60 THACKERAY. (car.

fair that he who is to be known as a writer should be so
called. But, as a man, I protest that it would be hard to
find an individual farther removed from the character.
Over and outside his fancy, which was the gift which
made him so remarkable,—a certain feminine softness
was the most remarkable trait about him. To give some
immediate pleasure was the great delight of his life,—a
sovereign to a schoolboy, gloves to a girl, a dinner to a
man, a compliment toa woman. His charity was over-
flowing. His generosity excessive. I heard once a story
of woe from a man who was the dear friend of both of us.
The gentleman wanted a large sum of money instantly,—
something under two thousand pounds,—had no natural
friends who could provide it, but must go utterly to the wall
without it. Pondering over this sad condition of things just
revealed to me, I met Thackeray between the two mounted
heroes at the Horse Guards, and told him the story. ‘ Do
you mean to say that I am to find two thousand pounds?”
he said, angrily, with some expletives. I explained that
I had not even suggested the doing of anything,—only that
we might discuss the matter. Then there came over his
face a peculiar smile, and a wink in his eye, and he
whispered his suggestion, as though half ashamed of his
meanness. “TI’ll go half,” he said, “if anybody will do
the rest.” And he did go half, at a day or two’s notice,
though the gentleman was no more than simply a friend.
Iam glad to be able to add that the money was quickly
repaid. I could tell various stories of the same kind, only
that I lack space, and that they, if simply added one to
the other, would lack interest.

He was no cynic, but he was a satirist, and could
now and then be a satirist in conversation, hitting very
hard when he did hit, When he was in America he met

1.] BIOGRAPHICAL. 61

at dinner a literary gentleman of high character, middle-
aged, and most dignified deportment. The gentleman was
one whose character and acquirements stood very high,—
deservedly so,—but who, in society, had that air of
wrapping his toga around him, which adds, or is sup-
posed to add, many cubits to a man’s height. But he
had a broken nose. At dinner he talked much of the
tender passion, and did so in a manner which stirred
up Thackeray’s feeling of the ridiculous. “ What has
the world come to,” said Thackeray out loud to the table,
“‘when two broken-nosed old fogies like you and me sit
talking about love to each other!” The gentleman was
astounded, and could only sit wrapping his toga in silent
dismay for the rest of the evening, Thackeray then,
as at other similar times, had no idea of giving pain, but
when he saw a foible he put his foot upon it, and tried to
stamp it out.

Such is my idea of the man whom many call a cynic,
Lut whom I regard as one of the most soft-hearted of
human beings, sweet as Charity itself, who went about
the world dropping pearls, doing good, and never wilfully
inflicting a wound.

CHAPTER IL
FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH,

How Thackeray commenced his connection with Fraser’s
Magazine I am unable to say. We know how he had
come to London with a view to a literary career, and thai
he had at one time made an attempt to earn his bread as
a correspondent to a newspaper from Paris. It is pro-
bable that he became acquainted with the redoubtable
Oliver Yorke, otherwise Dr. Maginn, or some of his staff,
through the connection which he had thus opened with
the press. He was not known, or at any rate he was un-
recognised, by Fraser in January, 1835, in which month an
amusing catalogue was given of the writers then employed,
with portraits of them, all seated at a symposium. I can
trace no article to his pen before November, 1837, when
the Yellowplush Correspondence was commenced, though
it is hardly probable that he should have commenced
with a work of so much pretension. There had been
published a volume called My Book, or the Anatomy
of Conduct, by John Skelton, and a very absurd book
no doubt it was. We may presume that it contained
maxims on etiquette, and that it was intended to convey
in print those invaluable lessons on deportment which,
as Dickens has told us, were subsequently given by
Mr. Turveydrop, in the academy kept by him for that

CHAP, II. | FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 63

purpose. Thackeray took this as his foundation for the
Fashionable Fux and Polite Annygoats, by Jeames Yellow-
plush, with which he commenced those repeated attacks
against snobbism which he delighted to make through a
considerable portion of his literary life, Oliver Yorke
has himself added four or five pages of his own to
Thackeray’s lucubrations; and with the second, and
some future numbers, there appeared illustrations by
Thackeray himself, illustrations at this time not having
been common with the magazine. From all this I gather
that the author was already held in estimation by Fraser’s
confraternity. I remember well my own delight with
Yellowplush at the time, and how I inquired who was the
author. It was then that I first heard Thackeray’s name,

The Yellowplush Papers were continued through nine
numbers. No further reference was made to Mr. Skelton
and his book beyond that given at the beginning of the
first number, and the satire is only shown by the attempt
made by Yellowplush, the footman, to give his ideas
generally on the manners of noble life. The idea seems
to be that a gentleman may, in heart and in action, be as
vulgar as a footman. No doubt he may, but the chances
are very much that he won’t. But the virtue of the
memoir does not consist in the lessons, but in the general
drollery of the letters. The “ orthogwaphy is inaccuwate,”
as a certain person says in the memoirs,—“ so inaccuwate ”
as to take a positive study to “ compwehend” it; but the
joke, though old, is so handled as to be very amusing.
Thackeray soon rushes away from his criticisms on
snobbism to other matters, There are the details of a card- -
sharping enterprise, in which we cannot but feel that we
recognise something of the author’s own experiences in the
misfortunes of Mr, Dawkins; there is the Earl of Crab’s,

64 LHAUKNNAY, [cHaP,

and then the first of those attacks which hé was tempted
to make on the absurdities of his brethren of letters, and
the only one which now has the appearance of having
been ill-natured. His first victims were Dr. Dionysius
Lardner and Mr. Edward Bulwer Lytton, as he was then.
We can surrender the doctor to the whip of the satirist ;
and for “ Sawedwadgeorgeearliitinbuiwig,” as the novelist
is made to call himseli, we can well believe that he must
himself have enjoyed the YVellowplush Memoirs if he ever
re-read them in after life. The speech in which he is
made to dissuade the footman from joining the world of
letters is so good that I will venture to insert it: “ Bullwig
was violently affected; a tear stood in his glistening i,
‘Yellowplush,’ says he, seizing my hand, ‘ you are right.
Quit not your present occupation; black boots, clean
knives, wear plush all your life, but don’t turn literary
man. Look at me. I am the first novelist in Europe
I have ranged with eagle wings over the wide regions of
literature, and perched on every eminence in its turn. [
have gazed with eagle eyes on the sun of philosophy, and
fathomed the mysterious depths of the human mind. All
languages are familiar to me, all thoughts are known to
me, all men understood by me. I have gathered wisdom
from the honeyed lips of Plato, as we wandered in the
gardens of the Academies; wisdom, too, from the mouth
of Job Johnson, as we smoked our backy in Seven Dials.
Such must be the studies, and such is the mission, in this
world of the Poet-Philosopher. But the knowledge is
only emptiness ; the initiation is but misery ; the initiated
aman shunned and banned by his fellows. Oh!” said
Bullwig, clasping his hands, and throwing his fine i’s
up to the chandelier, ‘the curse of Pwomethus descends
upon his wace.. Wath and punishment pursue them from

ne, FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH 65

genewation to genewation! Wo to genius, the heaven-
scaler, the fire-stealer! Wo and thrice-bitter desolation !
Earth is the wock on which Zeus, wemorseless, stwetches
his withing wietim ;—men, the vultures that feed and
fatten on him. Ai, ai! it is agony eternal,—gwoaning
and solitawy despair! And you, Yellowplush, would
penetwate these mystewies ; you would waise the awful
veil, and stand in the twemendous Pwesence. Beware,
as you value your peace, beware! Withdwaw, wash
Neophyte! For heaven’s sake! O for heaven’s sake!’
—Here he looked round with agony ;—‘ give me a glass of
bwandy-and-water, for this clawet is beginning to disagwee
with me.” It was thus that Thackeray began that vein
of satire on his contemporaries of which it may be said
that the older he grew the more amusing it was, and at
the same time less likely to hurt the feelings of the
author satirised.

The next tale of any length from Thackeray’s pen, in
the magazine, was that called Catherine, which is the
story taken from the life of a wretched woman called
Catherine Hayes. It is certainly not pleasant reading,
and was not written with a pleasant purpose. It assumes
to have come from the pen of Ikey Solomon, of Horse-
monger Lane, and its object is to show how disgusting
would be the records of thieves, cheats, and murderers if
their doings and language were described according to
their nature instead of being handled in such a way as
to create sympathy, and therefore imitation. Bulwer’s
Eugene Aram, Harrison Ainsworth’s Jack Sheppard, and
Dickens’ Nancy were in his mind, and it was thus that
he preached his sermon against the selection of such
heroes and heroines by the novelists of the day. “Be it
ranted,” he says, in his epilogue, “‘Solomon is dull; but

66 THACKERAY, fouar,

don’t attack his morality. He humbly submits that, in
his poem, no man shall mistake virtue for vice, no man
shall allow a single sentiment of pity or admiration to
enter his bosom for any character in the poem, it being
from beginning to end a scene of unmixed rascality, per-
formed by persons who never deviate into good feeling.”
The intention is intelligible enough, but such a story
neither could have been written nor read,—certainly not
written by Thackeray, nor read by the ordinary reader of
a first-class magazine,—had he not been enabled to adorn
it by infinite wit. Captain Brock, though a brave man, is
certainly not described as an interesting or gallant soldier;
but he is possessed of great resources. Captain Macshane,
too, is a thorough blackguard ; but he is one with a dash
of loyalty about him, so that the reader can almost sympa-
thise with him, and is tempted to say that Ikey Solomon
has not quite kept his promise.

Catherine appeared in 1839 and 1840. In the latter of
those years The Shabby Genteel story also came out. Then
in 1841 there followed The History of Samuel Titmarsh
and the Great Hoggarty Diamond, illustrated by Samuel’s
cousin, Michael Angelo. But though so announced in
Fraser, there were no illustrations, and those attached to
the story im later editions are not taken from sketches by
Thackeray. This, as far as I know, was the first use of
the name Titmarsh, and seems to indicate some intention
on the part of the author of creating a hoax as to two
personages,—one the writer and the other the illustrator.
If it were so he must soon have dropped the idea. In
the last paragraph he has shaken off his cousin Michael.
The main object of the story is to expose the villany of
bubble companies, and the danger they run who venture
to have dealings with city matters which they do not

Ti. | FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. €?

understand. I eannot but think that he altered his mint
and changed his purpose while he was writing it, actuated
probably by that editorial monition as to its length.

In 1842 were commenced The Confessions of Georqe
Fitz-Boodle, which were continued into 1843. I do not
think that they attracted much attention, or that they
have become peculiarly popular since. They are supposed
to contain the reminiscences of a younger son, who moans
over his poverty, complains of womankind generally,
laughs at the world all round, and intersperses his pages
with one or two excellent ballads. I quote one, written
for the sake of affording a parody, with the parody along
with it, because the two together give so strong an ex-
ample of the condition of Thackeray’s mind in regard to
literary products. The “humbug” of everything, the
pretence, the falseness of affected sentiment, the remote-
ness of poetical pathos from the true condition of the
average minds of men and women, struck him so strongly,
that he sometimes allowed himself almost to feel,—or at
any rate, to say,—that poeticak expression, as being above
nature, must be unnatural. He had declared to himself
that all humbug was odious, and should be by him laughed
down to the extent of his capacity. His Yellowplush,
his Catherine Hayes, his Fitz-Boodle, his Barry Lyndon,
and Becky Sharp, with many others of this kind, were
aul invented and treated for this purpose and after this
fashion. I skall have to say more on the same subject
when I come to The Snob Papers. In this instanca he
wrote a very pretty ballad, Zhe Willow Trve,-—so good
that if left by itself it would create no idea of absurdity
or extravagant pathos in the mind of the ordinary reader,—
simply that he might render his own work absurd by nis
own parody.

KF 2

68 THACKERAY.

THE WILLOW-TRHEE.
No. I.

Know ye the willow-tree,
Whose gray leaves quiver,
Whispering gloomily
To yon pale river?
Lady, at eventide
Wander not near it!
They say its branches hide
A sad lost spirit!

Once to the willow-tree
A maid came fearful,

Pale seemed her cheek to be,
Her blue eye tearful.

Soon as she saw the tree,
Her steps moved fleeter.
No one was there—ah me !—

No one to meet her!

Quick beat her heart to hear ,
The far bells’ chime

Toll from the chapel-tower
The trysting-time.

But the red sun went down
In golden flame,

And though she looked around,
Yet no one came!

Presently came the night,
Sadly to greet her,—

Moon in her silver light,
Stars in their glitter.

Then sank the moon awéy
Under the billow.

Still wept the maid alone—
There by the willow!

(CHAP.

THE WILLOW-TREE.
No. II.

Long by the willow-tree
Vainly they sought her,

Wild rang the mother’s screams
O’er the gray water.

“ Where is my lovely one?
Where is my daughter ?

Rouse thee, sir constable—
Rouse thee and look.
Fisherman, bring your net,
Boatman, your hook.
Beat in the lily-beds,
Dive in the brook.”

Vainly the constable
Shouted and called her.

Vainly the fisherman
Beat the green alder.

Vainly he threw the net.
Never it hauled her!

Mother beside the fire
Sat, her night-cap in;

Father in easychair,
Gloomily napping;

When at the window-sill
Came a light tapping.

And a pale countenance
Looked throughthe casement.
Loud beat the mother’s heart,
Sick with amazement,
And at the vision which
Came to surprise her!
Shrieking in an agony-——
Lor’! it’s Elizar !”’

iL] FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNO. B9

Througn the long darkness,
By the stream rolling,

Hour after hour went on
Tolling and tolling.

Long was the darkness,
Lonely and stilly.

Sbrill came the night wind,
Piercing and chilly.

Shrill blew the morning breeze,
Biting and cold.

Bleak peers the gray dawn
Over the wold!

Bleak over moor and stream
Looks the gray dawn,

Gray with dishevelled hair.

Still stands the willow there—
The maid is gone!

Domine, Domine!
Sing we a litany—-
Sing for poor maiden-heurts
broken and weary ;
Sing we a litany,
Wail we and weep we a
wild miserere!

Yes, twas Elizabeth ;—
Yes, twas their girl;

Pale was her cheek, and her
Hair out of curl.

“ Mother!” the loved one,
Blushing, exclaimed,

“Let not your innocent
Lizzy be blamed.

Yesterday, going to Aunt
Jones’s to tea,

Mother, dear mother, I
Forgot the door-key!
And as the night was cold,
And the way steep,

Mrs. Jones kept me to
Breakfast and sleep.”

Whether her pa and ma
Fully believed her,
That we shall never know.
Stern they received her ;
And for the work of that
Cruel, though short, night,—~
Sent her to bed without
Tea for a fortnight.

Moral.

Hey diddle diddlety,
Cat and the fiddlety,
Maidens of England take
caution by she! —
Let love and suicide
Never tempt you aside,
And always remember to take
the door-key !

Mr. George Fitz-Boodle gave his name to other narratives
beyond his own Conjessions. A series of stories was carried
on by him in Fraser, called Men's Wives, containing three,

70 THACKERAY. (crrae,

Ruvenving, Mr. and Mrs. Frank Berry, and Dennis
Hoggartys Wife. The first chapter in Mr. and Mrs.
Frank Berry describes “The Fight at Slaughter House.”
Slaughter House, as Mr. Venables reminded us in the
last chapter, was near Smithfield in London,—the school
which afterwards became Grey Friars; and the fight
between Biggs and Berry is the record of one which took
place in the flesh when Thackeray was at the Charter
House. Dut Mr. Fitz-Boodle’s name was afterwards
attached to a greater work than these, to a work so great
that subsequent editors have thought him to be unworthy
of the honour. Inthe January number, 1844, of Fraser's
Mugazine, are commenced the Memoirs of Burry Lyndon,
and the authorship is attributed to Mr. Fitz-Boodle. The
title given in the magazine was The Luch of Barry
Lyndon: a Romance of the last Century. By Fitz-Boodle.
In the collected edition of Thackeray’s works the Memoirs
are given as “ Written by himself,” and were, I presume, so
brought out by Thackeray, after they had appeared in
Fraser. Why Mr. George Fitz-Boodle should have been
robbed of so great an honour I do not know.

In imagination, language, construction, and general
literary capacity, Thackeray never did anything more re-
markable than Barry Lyndon. I have quoted the words
which he put into the mouth of Ikey Solomon, declaring
that in the story which he has there told he has created
nothing but disgust for the wicked characters he has pro-
duced, and that he has “used his humble endeavours to
cause the public also to hate them.” Here, in Barry
Lyndon, he has, probably unconsciously, acted in direct
opposition to his own principles. Barry Lyndon is as
great a scoundrel as the mind of man ever conceived. He
is one who might have taken as his motto Satan’s

1. ] FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 71

words; “Evil, be thou my good.” And yet his story
is so written that it is almost impossible not to
entertain something of a friendly feeling for him. He
tells his own adventures as a card-sharper, bully, and
liar; as a heartless wretch, who had neither love nor
gratitude in his composition; who had no sense even of
loyalty ; who regarded gambling as the highest occupation
to which a man could devote himself, and fraud as always
justified by success; a man possessed by all meannesses
except cowardice. And the reader is so carried away by
his frankness and energy as almost to rejoice when he
succeeds, and to grieve with him when he is brought to
the ground,

The man is perfectly satisfied as to the reasonableness,
—I might almost say, as to the rectitude,—of his own con-
duct throughout. He is one of a decayed Irish family,
that could boast of good blood. His father had obtained
possession of the remnants of the property by turning
Protestant, thus ousting the elder brother, who later on
becomes his nephew’s confederate in gambling. The
elder brother is true to the old religion, and as the law
stood in the last century, the younger brother, by changing
his religion, was able to turn him out. Barry, when a
boy, learns the slang and the gait of the debauched
gentlemen of the day. He is specially proud of being
a gentleman by birth and manners. He had been kid-
napped, and made to serve as a common soldier, but boasts
that he was at once fit for the occasion when enabled to
show as a court gentleman. “I came to it at once,” he
says, “and as if I had never done anything else all my
life. I had a gentleman to wait upon me, a French
friseur to dress my hair of a morning. I knew the taste
of chocolate as by intuition almost, and could distinguish

72 THACKERAY. TOuAP.

between the right Spanish and the French before I had
been a week in my new position. I had rings on all my
fingers and watches in both my fobs, canes, trinkets, and
snuffboxes of all sorts. I had the finest natural taste
for lace and china of any man I ever knew.”

To dress well, to wear a sword with a grace, to carry
away his plunder with affected indifference, and to appear
to be equally easy when he loses his last ducat, to be
agreeable to women, and to look like a gentleman,—these
are his accomplishments. In one place he rises to the
height of a grand professor in the art of gambling, and
gives his lessons with almost a noble air. “ Play grandly,
honourably. Be not of course cast down at losing; but
above all, be not eager at winning, as mean souls are.”
And he boasts of his accomplishments with so much
eloquence as to make the reader sure that he believes in
them. He is quite pathetic over himself, and can describe
with heartrending words the evils that befall him when
others use against him successfully any of the arts which
he practises himself.

The marvel of the book is not so much that the hero
should evidently think well of himself, as that the author
should so tell his story as to appear to be altogether on
the hero’s side. In Catherine, the horrors described are
most truly disgusting,—so much that the story, though
very clever, is not pleasant reading. The Memoirs of
Barry Lyndon axe very pleasant to read. There is nothing
to shock or disgust. The style of narrative is exactly
that which might be used’as to the exploits of a man
whom the author intended to represent as deserving of
sympathy and praise,—so that the reader is almost brought
to sympathise, But I should be doing an injustice to
Thackeray if I were to leave an impression that he had

iI. | FRASER'S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 73

taught lessons tending to evil practice, such as he supposed
to have been left by Jack Sheppard or Eugene Aram.
No one will be tempted to undertake the life of a
chevalier d’industrie by reading the book, or be made to
think that cheating at cards is either an agreeable or a
profitable profession. The following is excellent as a
tirade in favour of gambling, coming from Redmond de
Balibari, as he came to be called during his adventures
abroad, but it will hardly persuade anyone to be a
gambler ;

- “We always played on parole with anybody,—any
person, that is, of honour and noble lineage. We never
pressed for our winnings, or declined to receive promissory
notes in lieu of gold. But woe to the man who did not
pay when the note became due! Redmond de Balibari
was sure to wait upon him with his bill, and I promise
you there were very few bad debts. On the contrary,
gentlemen were grateful to us for our forbearance, and
our character for honour stood unimpeached. In latter
times, a vulgar national prejudice has chosen to cast a
slur upon the character of men of honour engaged in the
profession of play; but I speak of the good old days
of Europe, before the cowardice of the French aristocracy
(in the shameful revolution, which served them right)
brought discredit upon our order. They cry fie now
upon men engaged in play; but I should like to know
how much more honourable zhecr modes of livelihood are
than ours. The broker of the Exchange, who bulls and
bears, and buys and sells, and dabbles with lying loans,
and trades upon state secrets,—what is he but a gamester?
The merchant who deals in teas and tallow, is he any better ?
His bales of dirty indigo are his dice, his cards come up
every year instead of every ten minutes, and the sea is his

rd. THACKERAY. [orap.

green-table. You call the profession of the law an
honourable one, where a man will lie for any bidder ;—lie
down poverty for the sake of a fee from wealth; lie down
right because wrong is in his brief. You call a doctor an
honourable man,—a swindling quack who does not believe
in the nostrums which he prescribes, and takes your guinea
for whispering in your ear that it is a fine morning. And
yet, forsooth, a gallant man, who sits him down before
the baize and challenges all comers, his money against
theirs, his fortune against theirs, is proscribed by your
modern moral world! It is a conspiracy of the middle-
class against gentlemen. It is only the shopkeeper cant
which is to go down nowadays. I say that play
was an institution of chivalry. It has been wrecked
along with other privileges of men of birth. When
Seingalt engaged a man for six-and-thirty hours without
leaving the table, do you think he showed no courage?
How have we had the best blood and the brightest eyes
too, of Europe throbbing round the table, as I and my
uncle have held the cards and the bank against some
terrible player, who was matching some thousands out of
his millions against ourall, which was there on the baize !
When we engaged that daring Alexis Kosslofisky, and
won seven thousand louis on a single coup, had we lost
we should have been beggars the next day ; when /e lost,
he was only a village and a few hundred serfs in pawn
the worse. When at Toeplitz the Duke of Courland
brought fourteen lacqueys, each with four bags of florins,
and challenged our bank to play against the sealed bags,
what did we ask? ‘Sir,’ said we, ‘we have but eighty
thousand florins in bank, or two hundred thousand at
three months. If your highness’s bags do not contain
more than eighty thousand we will meet you.’ And we

11. | FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 75

did ; and after eleven hours’ play, in which our bank was
at one time reduced to two hundred and three ducats, we
won seventeen thousand florins of him. Is ¢his not some-
thing like boldness? Does this profession not require
skill, and perseverance, and bravery? Four crowned
heads looked on at the game, and an imperial princess,
when I turned up the ace of hearts and made Paroll,
burst mto tears. No man on the European Continent
held a higher position than Redmond Barry then ; and
when the Duke of Courland lost he was pleased to say
that we had won nobly. And so we had, and spent nobly
what we won.” This is very grand, and is put as an
eloquent man would put it who really wished to defend
gambling.

The rascal, of course, comes to a miserable end, but the
tone of the narrative is continued throughout. He is
brought to live at last with his old mother in the Fleet
prison, on a wretched annuity of fifty pounds per annum,
which she has saved out of the general wreck, and there he
dies of delirium tremens. For an assumed tone of continued
irony, maintained through the long memoir of a life,
never becoming tedious, never unnatural, astounding us
rather by its naturalness, I know nothing equal to Barry
Lyndon.

As one reads, one sometimes is struck by a conviction
that this or the other writer has thoroughly liked the
work on which he is engaged. There is a gusto about his
passages, a liveliness in the language, a spring in the
motion of the words, an eagerness of description, a lilt, if
I may so call it, in the progress of the narrative, which
makes the reader feel that the author has himself greatly
enjoyed what he has written. He has evidently gone on
with his work without any sense of weariness, or doubt ;

76 THACKERAY. [cllAap,

and the words have come readily to him. So it has been
with Barry Lyndon. “My mind was filled full with
those blackguards,” Thackeray once said toa friend. It
is easy enough to see that it was so. Iv the passage which
I have above quoted, his mind was running over with the
idea that a rascal might be so far gone in rascality as to
be in love with his own trade.

This was the last of Thackeray’s long stories in Fraser.
I have given by no means a complete catalogue of his
contributions to the magazine, but I have perhaps men-
tioned those which are best known. There were many
short pieces which have now been collected in his works,
such as Little Travels and Roadside Sketches, and the
Carmen Lilliense, in which the poet is supposed to be
detained at Lille by want of money. There are others
which I think are not to be found in the collected works,
such as a Bow of Novels by Titmarsh, and Titmarsh in
the Picture Galleries. After the name of Titmarsh had
been once assumed it was generally used in the papers
which he sent to Fraser.

Thackeray’s connection with Punch began in 1843,
and, as far as I can learn, Miss Tickletoby’s Lectures on
English History was his first contribution. They, how-
ever, have not been found worthy of a place in the
collected edition. His short pieces during a long period
of his life were so numerous that to have brought them
all together would have weighted his more important
works with too great an amount of extraneous matter.
The same lady, Miss Tickletoby, gave a series of lectures.
There was The History of the next French Revolution,
and The Wanderings of our Fat Contributor,—the first of
which is, and the latter is not, perpetuated in his works.
Our old friend Jeames Yellowplush, or De la Pluche,—for

TT. | FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PONCH. 7

we cannot for a moment doubt that he is the same Jeames,
—is very prolific, and as excellent in his orthography, his
sense, and satire, as ever. These papers began with The
Lucky Speculator. He lives in The Albany; he hires a
brougham ; and is devoted to Miss Emily Flimsey, the
daughter of Sir George, who had been his master,—to the
great injury of poor Maryanne, the fellow-servant who
had loved him in his kitchen days, Then there follows
that wonderful ballad, Jeames of Backley Square. Upon
this he writes an angry letter to Punch, dated from his
chambers in The Albany; “ Hasa reglar suscriber to your
amusing paper, I beg leaf to state that I should never
have done so had I supposed that it was your ’abbit to
igspose the mistaries of privit life, and to hinger the
delligit feelings of umble individyouls like myself.” He
writes in his own defence, both as to Maryanne and to
the share-dealing by which he had made his fortune; and
he ends with declaring his right to the position which
he holds. ‘You are corrict in stating that I am of
hancient Normin fam’ly. This is more than Peal can
say, to whomb I applied for a barnetcy ; but the primmier
being of low igstraction, natrally stikles for his horder.”
And the letter is signed “‘ Fitzjames De la Pluche.” Then
follows his diary, beginning with a description of the way
in which he rushed into Punch’s office, declaring his mis-
fortunes, when losses had come upon him. “I wish to
be paid for my contribewtions to your paper. Suckm-
stances is altered with me.” Whereupon he gets a cheque
upon Messrs. Pump and Aldgate, and has himself ¢arried
away to new speculations. He leaves his diary behind
him, and Punch surreptitiously publishes it. There is
much in the diary which comes from Thackeray’s very
heart. Who does not remember his indignation agains}

78 THACKERAY. [CHAP

Lord Bareacres? “I gave the old humbug a few shares
out of my own pocket. ‘There, old Pride,’ says I, ‘I
like to seo youdown on your knees to a footman. There,
old Pomposity! Take fifty pounds. I like to see you
come cringing and begging for it!’ Whenever I see him
in a very public place, I take my change for my money.
I digg him in the ribbs, or clap his padded old shoulders.
I call him ‘ Bareacres, my old brick,’ and I see him wince,
It does my ’art good.” It does Thackeray’s heart good to
pour himself out in indignation against some imaginary
Bareacres. He blows off his steam with such an eagerness
that he forgets fora time, or nearly forgets, his cacography.
Then there are “ Jeames on Time Bargings,” “ Jeames on
the Guage Question,” “Mr. Jeames again.” Of all our
authors herocs Jeames is perhaps the most amusing.
There is not much in that joke of bad spelling, and we
should have been inclined to say beforehand, that Mrs.
Malaprop had done it so well and so sufficiently, that no
repetition of it would be received with great favour. Like
other dishes, it depends upon the cooking. Jeames, with
his “suckmstances,” high or low, will be immortal.

There were The Travels in London, a long series of them ;
and then Punch’s Prize Novelists, in which Thackeray
imitates the language and plots of Bulwer, Disrael1,
Charles Lever, G. P. R. James, Mrs. Gore, and Cooper,
the American. They are all excellent ; perhaps Codlingsby
is the best. Mendoza, when he is fighting with the
bargeman, or drinking with Codlingsby, or receiving
Louis Philippe in his rooms, seems to have come direct
from the pen of our Premier. Phil Fogerty’s jump, and
the younger and the elder horsemen, as they come riding
into the story, one in his armour and the other with his
feathers, have the very savour.and tone of Lever and

11. ] FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 79

James; but then the savour and the tone are not so
piquant. I know nothing in the way of imitation to equal
Codlingsby, if it be not The Tale of Drury Lane, by
W. 8. in the Rejected Addresses, of which it is said that
Walter Scott declared that he must have written it him-
self. The scene between Dr. Franklin, Louis XVI, Marie
Antoinette, and Tatua, the chief of the Nose-rings, as told
in The Stars and Stripes, is perfect in its way, but it fails
as being a caricature of Cooper. The caricaturist has
been carried away beyond and above his model, by his
own sense of fun.

Of the ballads which appeared in Punch I will speak
elsewhere, as I must give a separate short chapter to our
author’s power of versification ; but I must say a word of
The Snob Papers, which were at the time the most popular
and the best known of all Thackeray’s contributions to
Punch. I think that perhaps they were more charming,
more piquant, more apparently true, when they came out
one after another in the periodical, than they are now as
collected together. JI think that one at a time would
be better than many. And I think that the first half in
the long list of snobs would have been more manifestly
snobs to us than they are now with the second half of
the list appended. In fact, there are too many of them,
till the reader is driven to tell himself that the meaning
of it all is that Adam’s family is from first to last a
family of snobs. “ First,” says Thackeray, in preface,
“ the world was made ; then, as a matter of course, snobs ;
they existed for years and years, and were no more known
than America. But presently,—ingens patebat tellus,—
the: people became darkly aware that there was such a
race. Not above five-and-twenty years since, a name, an
expressive monosyllable, arose to designate that case. That

80 THACKERAY. (CHAP,

name has spread over England like railroads subsequently ;
snobs are known and recognised throughout an empire on
which I am given to understand the sun never sets.
Punch appears at the right season to chronicle their his
tory; and the individual comes forth to write that history
in Punch.

“T have,—and for this gift I congratulate myself with
a deep and abiding thankfulness,—an eye fora snob. If
the truthful is the beautiful, it is beautiful to study even
the snobbish ;—-to track snobs through history as certain
little dogs in Hampshire hunt out truffles; to sink shafts
in society, and come upon rich veins of snob-ore. Snob-
bishness is like Death, in a quotation from Horace,
which I hope you never heard, ‘ beating with equal foot
at poor men’s doors, and kicking at the gates of emperors.’
It is a great mistake to judge of snobs lightly, and think
they exist among the lower classes merely. An immense
percentage of snobs, I believe, is to be found in every
rank of this mortal life. You must not judge hastily or
vulgarly of snobs ; to do so shows that you are yourself
a snob. I myself have been taken for one.”

The state of Thackeray’s mind when he commenced
his delineations of snobbery is here accurately depicted.
Written, as these papers were, for Punch, and written, as
they were, by Thackeray, it was a necessity that every
idea put forth should be given as a joke, and that the
satire on society in general should be wrapped up in
burlesque absurdity. But not the less eager and serious
was his intention, "When he tells us, at the end of the
first chapter, of a certain Colonel Snobley, whom he met
at “Bagnigge Wells,” as he says, and with whom he
was so disgusted that he determined to drive the man out
of the house, we are well aware that he had met an

HW.) FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 81

offensive military gentleman,—probably at Tunbridge.
Gentlemen thus offensive, even though tamely offensive,
were peculiarly offensive to him. We presume, by wnat
follows, that this gentleman, ignorantly,—for himself most
unfortunately,—spoke of Publicola. Thackeray was dis-
gusted,—diseusted that such a name should be lugged into
ordinary conversation at all, and then that a man should
talk about a name with which he was so little acquainted
as not to know how to pronounce it. The man was
therefore a snob, and ought to be put down ; in all which
I think that Thackeray was unnecessarily hard on the
man, and gave him too much importance.

So it was with him in his whole intercourse with snobs,
—as he calls them. He saw something that was dis-
tasteful, and a man instantly became a snob in his
estimation. “But you can draw,” a man once said to
him, there having been some discussion on the subject of
Thackeray’s art powers. The man meant no doubt to be
civil, but meant also to imply that for the purpose needed
the drawing was good enough, a matter on which he was
competent to form an opinion. Thackeray instantly put
the man down as a snob for flattering him. The little
courtesies of the world and the little discourtesies became
snobbish to him. A man could not wear his hat, or
carry his umbrella, or mount his horse, without falling
into some error of snobbism before his hypercritical
eyes. St. Michael would have carried his armour amiss,
and St. Cecilia have been snobbish as she twanged her
harp.

i fancy that a policeman considers that every man
in the street would be properly “run in,” if only all
the truth about the man had been known. The tinker
thinks that every pot is unsound, The cobbler doubts the

fe!

ge THACKERAY. Conap.

stability of every shoe. So at last it grew to be the
case with Thackeray. There was more hope that the
city should be saved because of its ten just men, than
for society, if society were to depend on ten who were
not snobs. All this arose from the keenness of his
vision into that which was really mean. But that
keenness became so aggravated by the intenseness of his
search that the slightest speck of dust became to his eyes
as afoul stain. Publicdla, as we saw, damned one poor
man to a wretched immortality, and another was called
pitilessly over the coals, because he had mixed a grain of
flattery with a bushel of truth. Thackeray tells us that
he was born to hunt out snobs, as certain dogs are trained
to find truffles. But we can imagine that a dog, very
energetic at producing truffles, and not finding them as
plentiful as his heart desired, might occasionally produce
roots which were not genuine,—might be carried on in
his energies till to his senses every fungus-root became a
truffle. I think that there has been something of this
with our author’s snob-hunting, and that his zeal was at
last greater than his discrimination.

The nature of the task which came upon him made
this fault almost unavoidable. When a hit is made, say
with a piece at a theatre, or with a set of illustrations, or
with a series of papers on this or the other subject,—when
something of this kind has suited the taste of the moment,
and gratified the public, there is a natural inclination on
the part of those who are interested to continue that
which has been found to be good. It pays and it pleases,
and it seems to suit everybody. Then it is continued
usque ad nauseam. We see it in everything. When the
king said he liked partridges, partridges were served to
him every day. The world was pleased with certain

ir.] FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 83

tidiculous portraits of its big men. The big men were
soon used up, and the little men had to be added.

We can imagine that even Punch may occasionally be
at a loss for subjects wherewith to delight its readers. In
fact, The Snob Papers were too good to be brought to an
end, and therefore there were forty-five of them. <A
dozen would have been better. As he himself says in his
last paper, ‘‘for a mortal year we have been together
flattering and abusing the human race.” It was exactly
that. Of course we know,—everybody always knows,—
that a bad specimen of his order may be found in every
division of society. There may be a snop king, a snob
parson, a snob member of parliament, a snob grocer, tailor,
goldsmith, and the like. But that is not what has been
meant. We did not want a special satirist to tell us what
we all knew before. Had snobbishness been divided for
us into its various attributes and characteristics, rather
than attributed to various classes, the end sought,—the
exposure, namely, of the evil,—would have been better
attained. ‘The snobbishness of flattery, of falsehood, of
cowardice, lying, time-serving, money-worship, would have
been perhaps attacked to a better purpose than that of
kings, priests, soldiers, merchants, or men of letters. The
assault as made by Thackeray seems to have been niade
on the profession generally.

The paper on clerical snobs is intended to be essentially
generous, and is ended by an allusion to certain old clerical
friends which has a sweet tone of tenderness in it. “ How
should he who knows you, not respect you or your calling?
May this pen never write a pennyworth again if it ever
casts ridicule upon either.” But in the meantime he has
thrown his stone at the covetousness of bishops, because
of certain Irish prelates who died rich many years before

84 THACKERAY. (CHAP,

he wrote. The insinuation is that bishops generally take
more of the loaves and fishes than they ought, whereas
the fact is that bishops’ incomes are generally so msuf-
ficient for the requirements demanded of them, that a
feeling prevails that a clergyman to be fit for a bishopric
should have a private income. He attacks the snobbish-
ness of the universities, showing us how one class of
young men consists of fellow-commoners, who wear lace
and drink wine with their meals, and another class con-
sists of sizars, or servitors, who wear badges, as being
poor, and are never allowed to take their food with their
fellow-students. That arrangements fit for past times are
not fit for these is true enough. Consequently they
should gradually be changed; and from day to day are
changed. But there is no snobbishness in this. Was the
fellow-commoner a snob when he acted in accordance with
the custom of his rank and standing? or the sizar who
accepted aid in achieving that education which he could
not have got witnout it? or the tutor of the college, who
carried out the rules entrusted to him? There are two
military snobs, Rag and Famish. One is a swindler and
the other a debauched young idiot. No doubt they are
both snobs, and one has been, while the other is, an officer.
But there is,—I think, not an unfairness so much as an
absence of intuition,—in attaching to soldiers especially two
vices to which all classes are open. Rag was a gambling
snob, and Famish a drunken snob,—but they were not
specially military snobs. There is a chapter devoted to
dinner-giving snobs, in which I think the doctrine laid
down will not hold water, and therefore that the snobbism
imputed is not proved. ‘“ Your usual style of meal,” says
the satirist —“ that is plenteous, comfortable, and in its
perfection,—should be that to which you welcome your

1z.] FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 85

friends.” Then there is something said about the “ Brum-
magem plate pomp,” and we are told that it is right that
dukes should give grand dinners, but that we,—of the
middle class,—should entertain our friends with the sim-
plicity which is customary with us. In all this there is,
I think, a mistake. The duke gives a grand dinner be-
cause he thinks his friends will like it, sitting down when
alone with the duchess, we may suppose, with a retinue and
grandeur less than that which is arrayed for gala occasions.
So is it with Mr. Jones, who is no snob because he pro-
vides a costly dinner,—if he can afford it. He does it
because he thinks his friends will like it. It may be that
the grand dinner is a bore,—and that the leg of mutton
with plenty of gravy and potatoes all hot, would be nicer.
I generally prefer the leg of mutton myself. ButIdo not
think that snobbery is involved in the other. A man, no
doubt, may be a snob in giving a dinner. Iam not a snob
because for the occasion I eke out my own dozen silver
forks with plated ware; but if I make believe that my
plated ware is true silver, then J am a snob.

In that matter of association with our betters,—we will
for the moment presume that gentlemen and ladies with
titles or great wealth are our betters,—great and delicate
questions arise as to what is snobbery, and what is not,
in speaking of which Thackeray becomes very indignant,
and explains the intensity of his feelings as thoroughly by
a charming little picture as by his words. It is a picture
of Queen Elizabeth as she is about to trample with disdain
on the coat which that snob Raleigh is throwing for her
use on the mud before her. This is intended to typify the
low parasite nature of the Englishman which has been
described in the previous page or two. “And of these
calm moralists,’—-it matters not for our present purpose

86 THACKERAY. [oHAP.

who were the moralists in question,“ is there one I wonder
whose heart would not throb with pleasure if he could be
seen walking arm-in-arm with a couple of dukes down
Pall Mall? No; it is impossible, in our condition of
society, not to be sometimes a snob.” And again: * How
should it be otherwise in a country where lordolatry is
part of our creed, and where our children are brought up
to respect the ‘Peerage’ as the Englishman’s second
Bible.” Then follows the wonderfully graphic picture of
Queen Elizabeth and Raleigh.

In ali this Thackeray has been carried away from the
truth by his hatred for a certain meanness of which there
are no doubt examples enough. As for Raleigh, I think
we have always sympathised with the young man, instead
of despising him, because he felt on the impulse of the
moment that nothing was too good for the woman and the
queen combined. The idea of getting something in return
for his coat could hardly have come so quick to him as
that impulse in favour of royalty and womanhood. If one
of us to-day should see the queen passing, would he not
raise his hat, and assume, unconsciously, something of an
altered demeanour because of his reverence for majesty ?
In doing so he would have no mean desire of getting any-
thing. The throne and its occupant are to him honour-
able, and he honours them. There is surely no greater
mistake than to suppose that reverence is snobbishness,
I meet a great man in the street, and some chance having
brought me to his knowledge, le stops and says a word to
me. Am Ia snob because I feel myself to be graced by
his notice? Surely not. And if his acquaintance goes
further and he asks me to dinner, am I not entitled so
far to think well of myself because I have been found
worthy of his society ?

1.1 FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 87

They who have raised themselves in the world, and
they, too, whose position has enabled them to receive all
that estimation can give, all that society can furnish, all
that intercourse with the great can give, are more likely
to be pleasant companions than they who have been less
fortunate. That picture of two companion dukes in
Pall Mall is too gorgeous for human eye to endure, <A
man would be scorched to cinders by so much light, as he
would be crushed by a sack of sovereigns even though he
might be allowed to have them if he could carry them
away. But there can be no doubt that a peer taken at
random as a companion would be preferable to a clerk
from a counting-house,—taken at random. The clerk
might turn out a scholar on your hands, and the peer
no better than a poor spendthrift ;—but the chances are
the other way.

A tufthunter is a snob, a parasite is a snob, the man
who allows the manhood within him to be awed by a
coronet is a snob. The man who worships mere wealth is
asnob. But so also is he who, in fear lest he should bs
called a snob, is afraid to seek the acquaintance,—or if it
come to speak of the acquaintance,— of those whose
acquaintance is manifestly desirable. In all this I feel
that Thackeray was carried beyond the truth by his intense
desire to put down what is mean.

Tt is in truth well for us all to know what constitutes
snobbism, and I think that Thackeray, had he not been
driven to dilution and dilatation, could have told us.
If you will keep your hands from picking and stealing,
and your tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering,
you will not be a snob. The lesson seems to be simple,
and perhaps a little trite, but if you look into it, it will
be found to contain nearly all that is necessary.

$8 THACKERAY. [owat

But the excellence of each individual picture as it is
drawn is not the less striking because there may be found
some fault with the series as a whole. What can excel
the telling of the story of Captain Shindy at his club,—
which is, I must own, as.true as itis graphic. Captain
Shindy is a real snob. “‘ Look at it, sir; is it cooked ?
Smell it, sir. Is it meat fit for a gentleman?’ he roars
out to the steward, who stands trembling before him,
and who in vain tells him that the Bishop of Bullock-
smithy has just had three from the same loin.” The
telling as regards Captain Shindy is excellent, but the
sidelong attack upon the episcopate is cruel. “All the
waiters in the club are huddled round the captain’s
mutton-chop. He roars out the most horrible curses
at John for not bringing the pickles. He utters the most
dreadful oaths because Thomas has not arrived with the
Harvey sauce. Peter comes tumbling with the water-
jug over Jeames, who is bringing the ‘glittering canistors
with bread.’

% * % * #

“Poor Mrs. Shindy and the children are, meanwhile,
in dingy lodgings somewhere, waited upon by a charity
girl in pattens,”

The visit to Castle Carabas, and the housekeeper’s
description of the wonders of the family mansion, is as
good. ‘The Side Entrance and ’All,’ says the house.
keeper. ‘The. halligator hover the mantelpiece was
brought home by Hadmiral St. Michaels, when a capting
with Lord Hanson. The harms on the cheers is the
harms of the Carabas family. The great ‘all is seventy
feet in lenth, fifty-six in breath, and thirty-eight feet
igh. The carvings of the chimlies, representing the

a1. ] FRASER’S MAGAZINE AND PUNCH. 89

buth of Venus and ’Ercules and “Eyelash, is by Van
Chislum, the most famous sculpture of his hage and
country. The ceiling, by Calimanco, represents Painting,
Harchitecture, and Music,—the naked female figure with
the barrel-organ,—introducing George, first Lord Carabas,
to the Temple of the Muses. The winder ornaments is by
Vanderputty. The floor is Patagonian marble ; and the
chandelier in the centre was presented to Lionel, second
marquis, by Lewy the Sixteenth, whose ’ead was cut
hoff in the French Revolution. We now henter tha
South Gallery,” etc. ete. All of which is very good fun,
with a dash of truth in it also as to the snobbery;
—only in this it will be necessary to be quite sure
where the snobbery lies. If my Lord Carabas has a
“buth of Venus,” beautiful for all eyes to see, there
is no snobbery, only good-nature, in the showing it; nor
is there snobbery in going to see it, if a beautiful “ buth
of Venus” has charms for you. If you merely want to
see the inside of a lord’s house, and the lord is puffed
up with the pride of showing his, then there will be two
snobs.

Of all those papers it may be said that each has that
quality of a pearl about it which in the previous chapter
I endeavoured to explain. In each some little point is
made in excellent language, so as to charm by its neat-
ness, incision, and drollery. But Zhe Snob Papers
had better be read separately, and not taken in the
lunip.

Thackeray ceased to write for Punch in 1852, either
entirely or almost so.

CHAPTER ITT.
VANITY FAIR,

SoMETSING has been said, in the biographical chapter, of
the way in which Vanity Fuir was produced, and of the
period in the author’s life in which it was written. He
had become famous,—to a limited extent,—bDy the exquisite
nature of his contributions to periodicals ; but he desired
to do something larger, something greater, something,
perhaps, less ephemeral. For though Barry Lyndon and
others have not proved to be ephemeral, it was thus that
he regarded them. In this spirit he went to work and
wrote Vanity Furr.

It may be as well to speak first of the faults which were
attributed to it. It was said that the good people were
all fools, and that the clever people were all knaves.
When the critics,—the talking critics as well as the writing
critics,—began to discuss Vanity Fair, there had already
grown up a feeling as to Thackeray as an author—that he
was one who had taken up the business of castigating the
vices of the world. Scott had dealt with the heroics,
whether displayed in his Flora MacIvors or Meg Merrilieses,
in his Ivanhoes or Ochiltrees. Miss Edgeworth had been
moral; Miss Austen conventional; Bulwer had been
poetical and sentimental; Marryat and Lever had been
funny and pugnacious, always with a dash of gallantry,

CHAP. III. | VANITY FAIR. Si

displaying funny naval and funny military life; and
Dickens had already become great in painting the virtues
of the lower orders. But by all these some kind of virtue
had been sung, though it might be only the virtue of
riding a horse or fighting a duel. Even Eugene Aram
and Jack Sheppard, with whom Thackeray found so much
fault, were intended to be fine fellows, though they broke
into houses and committed murders. The primary object
of all those writers was to create an interest by exciting
sympathy. To enhance our sympathy personages were
introduced who were very vile indeed,—as Bucklaw, in
the guise of a lover, to heighten our feelings for Ravens-
wood and Lucy; as Wild, as a thief-taker, to make us
more anxious for the saving of Jack ; as Ralph Nickleby,
to pile up the pity for his niece Kate. But each of these
novelists might have appropriately begun with an Arma
virumque cano. The song was to be of something god-
like,—even with a Peter Simple. With Thackeray it had
been altogether different. Alas, alas! the meanness of
human wishes; the poorness of human results! That
had been his tone. There can be no doubt that the
heroic had appeared contemptible to him, as being untrue.
The girl who had deceived her papa and mamma seemed
more probable to him than she who perished under
the willow-tree from sheer love,—as given in the last
chapter. ° Why sing songs that are false? Why tell
of Lucy Ashtons and Kate Nicklebys, when pretty
girls, let them be ever so beautiful, can be silly
and sly? Why pour philosophy out of the mouth
of a fashionable young gentleman like Pelham, seeing
that young gentlemen of that sort rarely, or we may say
never, talk after that fashion? Why make a house-
breaker a gallant charming young fellow, the truth being

92 THACKERAY. fomar.

that housebreakers as a rule are as objectionable in their
manners as they are in their morals? Thackeray’s mind
had in truth worked in this way, and he had become a
satirist. That had been all very well for Fraser and
Punch; but when his satire was continued through a
long novel, in twenty-four parts, readers,—who do in
truth like the heroic better than the wicked,—began to
declare that this writer was no novelist, but only a
cynic.

Thence the question arises what a novel should be,—
which I will endeavour to discuss very shortly in a
later chapter. But this special fault was certainly found
with Vanity Fatr at the time. Heroines should not only
be beautiful, but should be endowed also with a quasi
celestial grace,— grace of dignity, propriety, and reticence.
A heroine should hardly want to be married, the arrange-
ment being almost too mundane,—and, should she be
brought to consent to undergo such bond, because of its
acknowledged utility, it should be at some period so dis-
tant as hardly to present itself to the mind as a reality.
Eating and drinking should be altogether indifferent to her,
and her clothes should be picturesque rather than smart,
and that from accident rather than design. Thackeray’s
Amelia does not at all come up to the description here given.
She is proud of having a lover, constantly declaring to
herself and to others that he is “‘the greatest and the best of
men,”—whereas the young gentleman is, in truth, a very
little man. She is not at all indifferent as to her finery, nor,
as we see incidentally, to enjoying her suppers at Vaux-
hall. She is anxious to be married,—and as soon as
possible. A hero too should be dignified and of a noble
presence ; a man who, though he may be as poor as
Nicholas Nickleby, should nevertheless be beautiful on all

It. | VANITY FAIR. 33

occasions, and never deficient in readiness, address, or
self-assertion. Vanity Fair is specially declared by the
author to be “a novel without a hero,” and therefore we
have hardly a right to complain of deficiency of heroic
conduct in any of the male characters. But Captain
Dobbin does become the hero, and is deficient. Why
was he called Dobbin, except to make him ridiculous ?
Why is he so shamefully ugly, so shy, so awkward?
Why was he the son of a grocer? Thackeray in sc
depicting him was determined to run counter to the
recognised taste of novel readers. And then again there
was the feeling of another great fault. Let there be the
virtuous in a novel and let there be the vicious, the
dignified and the undignified, the sublime and the ridicu-
lous,—only let the virtuous, the dignified, and the sublime
be in the ascendant. Edith Bellenden, and Lord Evan-
dale, and Morton himself would be too stilted, were
they not enlivened by Mause, and Cuddie, and Pound-
text. But here, in this novel, the vicious and the
absurd have been made to be of more importance than
the good and the noble. Becky Sharp and Rawdon
Crawley are the real heroine and hero of the story. It is
with them that the reader is called upon to interest
himself. It is of them that he will think when he is -
reading the book. It is by them that he will judge the
book when he has read it. There was no doubt a feeling
with the public that though satire may be very well in its
place, it should not be made the backbone of a work so long
and so important as this, A short story such as Catherine
or Barry Lyndon might be pronounced to have been called
for by the iniquities of an outside world; but this
seemed to the readers to have been addressed almost to
themselves. Now men and women like to be painted ag

QL THACKERAY. (cap. .

Titian would paint them, or Raffaelle,—not as Rembrandt,
or even Rubens.

Whether the ideal or the real is the best form of
a novel may be questioned, but there can be no doubt
that as there are novelists who cannot descend from the
bright heaven of the imagination to walk with their feet
upon the earth, so there are others to whom it is not
siven to soar among clouds. The reader must please him-
self, and make his selection if he cannot enjoy both.
There are many who are carried into a heaven of pathos
by the woes of a Master of Ravenswood, who fail alto-
gether to be touched by the enduring constancy of a
Dobbin. There are others,—and I will not say but they
may enjoy the keenest delight which literature can give,
—who cannot employ their minds on fiction unless it be
conveyed in poetry. With Thackeray it was essential
that the representations made by him should be, to his
own thinking, lifelike. A Dobbin seemed to him to be
such a one as might probably be met with in the world,
whereas to his thinking a Ravenswood was simply a
creature of the imagination. He would have said of
such, as we would say of female faces by Raffaelle, that
women would like to be like them, but are not like them.
Men might like to be like Ravenswood, and women may
dream of men so formed and constituted, but such men
do not exist. Dobbins do, and therefore Thackeray chose
to write of a Dobbin.

So also of the preference given to Becky Sharp and
to Rawdon Crawley. Thackeray thought that more can
be done by exposing the vices than extolling the virtues
of mankind. No doubt. he had a more thorough belief
in the one than in the other. The Dobbins he did en-
counter—seldom; the Rawdon Crawleys very often. He

Il. | VANITY FAIR. 95

saw around him so much that was mean | He was hurt
so often by the little vanities of people! It was thus
that he was driven to that overthoughtfulness about snobs
of which I have spoken in the last chapter. It thus be-
came natural to him to insist on the thing which he
hated with unceasing assiduity, and only to break out
now and again into a rapture of love for the true nobility
which was dear to him,—as he did with the character of
Captain Dobbin.

Tt must be added to all this that, before he has done
with his snob or his knave, he will generally weave in
some: little trait of humanity by which the sinner shall
be relieved from the absolute darkness of utter iniquity.
He deals with no Varneys or Deputy-Shepherds, all
villany and all lies, because the snobs and knaves he had
seen had never been all snob or all knave. Even Shindy
probably had some feeling for the poor woman he left at
home. Rawdon Crawley loved his wicked wife dearly,
and there were moments even with her in which some
redeeming trait half reconciles her to the reader.

Such were the faults which were found in Vanity Fazr ;
but though the faults were found freely, the book was
read by all. Those who are old enough can well remember
the effect which it had, and the welcome which was given
to the different numbers as they appeared. Though the
story is vague and wandering, clearly commenced without
any idea of an ending, yet there is something in the
telling which makes every portion of it perfect in itself.
There are absurdities in it which would not be admitted
to anyone who had not a peculiar gift of making even his
absurdities delightful. No schoolgirl who ever lived
would have thrown back her gift-book, as Rebecca did the
“ dixonary,” out of the carriage window as.she was taken

O4 THACKERAY. (cHapP. .

Titian would paint them, or Raffaelle,—not as Rembrandt,
or even Rubens.

Whether the ideal or the real is the best form of
a novel may be questioned, but there can be no doubt
that as there are novelists who cannot descend from the
bright heaven of the imagination to walk with their feet
upon the earth, so there are others to whom it is not
siven to soar among clouds. The reader must please him-
self, and make his selection if he cannot enjoy both.
There are many who are carried into a heaven of pathos
by the woes of a Master of Ravenswood, who fail alto-
gether to be touched by the enduring constancy of a
Dobbin. There are others,—and I will not say but they
may enjoy the keenest delight which literature can give,
—wwho cannot employ their minds on fiction unless it be
conveyed in poetry. With Thackeray it was essential
that the representations made by him should be, to his
own thinking, lifelike. A Dobbin seemed to him to be
such a one as might probably be met with in the world,
whereas to his thinking a Ravenswood was simply a
creature of the imagination. He would have said of
such, as we would say of female faces by Raffaelle, that
women would like to be like them, but are not like them.
Men might like to be like Ravenswood, and women may
dream of men so formed and constituted, but such men
do not exist. Dobbins do, and therefore Thackeray chose
to write of a Dobbin.

So also of the preference given to Becky Sharp and
to Rawdon Crawley. Thackeray thought that more can
be done by exposing the vices than extolling the virtues
of mankind. No doubt he hada more thorough belief
in the one than in the other. The Dobbins he did en-
counter—seldom; the Rawdon Crawleys very often. He

III. ] VANITY FAIR. 95

saw around him so much that was mean ! He was hurt
so often by the little vanities of people! It was thus
that he was driven to that overthoughtfulness about snobs
of which I have spoken in the last chapter. It thus be-
came natural to him to insist on the thing which he
hated with unceasing assiduity, and only to break out
now and again into a rapture of love for the true nobility
which was dear to him,—-as he did with the character of
Captain Dobbin.

It must be added to all this that, before he. has done
with his snob or his knave, he will generally weave in
some: little trait of humanity by which the sinner shall
be relieved from the absolute darkness of utter iniquity.
He deals with no Varneys or Deputy-Shepherds, all
villany and all lies, because the snobs and knaves he had
seen had never been all snob or all knave. Even Shindy
probably had some feeling for the poor woman he left at
home. Rawdon Crawley loved his wicked wife dearly,
and there were moments even with her in which some
redeeming trait half reconciles her to the reader.

Such were the faults which were found in Vanity Fazr;
but though the faults were found freely, the book was
read by all. Those who are old enough can well remember
the effect which it had, and the welcome which was given
to the different numbers as they appeared. Though the
story is vague and wandering, clearly commenced without
any idea of an ending, yet there is something in the
telling which makes every portion of it perfect in itself.
There are absurdities in it which would not be admitted
to anyone who had not a peculiar gift of making even his
absurdities delightful. No schoolgirl who ever lived
would have thrown back her gift-book, as Rebecea did the
“ dixonary,” out of the carriage window as.she was taken

96 THACKERAY. [cHAP,

away from school, But who does not love that scene
with which the novel commences? How could such a
girl as Amelia Osborne have got herself into such society
as that In which we see her at Vauxhall? But we for-
give it all because of the telling, And then there is
that crowning absurdity of Sir Pitt Crawley and his
establishment.

I never could understand how Thackeray in his first
serious attempt could have dared to subject himself and
Sir Pitt Crawley to the critics of the time. Sir Pitt is
a baronet, a man of large property, and in Parliament, to
whom Becky Sharp goes as a governess at the end of
a delightful visit with her friend Amelia Sedley, on
leaving Miss Pinkerton’s school. The Sedley carriage
takes her to Sir Pitt’s door. “ When the bell was
rung a head appeared between the interstices of the
dining-room shutters, and the door was opened by
a man in drab breeches and gaiters, with a dirty
old coat, a foul old neckcloth lashed round his bristly
neck, a shining bald head, a leering red face, a pair
of twinkling gray eyes, and a mouth perpetually on the
grin.

“This Sir Pitt Crawley’s?’ says John from the
box.

“6 < Wes,’ says the man at the door with a nod.

“¢¢ Hand down these ’ere trunks there,’ said John.

“¢ Hand ’em down yourself,’ said the porter.”

But John on the box declines to do this, as he cannot
leave his horses.

“The bald-headed man, taking his hands out of his
breeches’ pockets, advanced on this summons, and throwing
Miss Sharp’s trunk over his shoulder, carried it into the
house.” Then Becky is shown into the louse, and a

11.) VANITY FAIR. £7

dismantled dining-room is described, into which she is led
by the dirty man with the trunk.

Two kitchen chairs, and a round table, and an attenuated old
poker and tongs, were, however, gathered round the fireplace, as
was a saucepan over a feeble, sputtering fire. There was a bit of
cheese and bread and a tin candlestick on the table, and a litile
black porter in a pint pot.

“Had your dinner, I suppose?” This was said by him of the
bald head. “It is not too warm for you? Like a drop of
beer P”

“Where is Sir Pitt Crawley?” said Miss Sharp majestically.

“He, he! I’m Sir Pitt Crawley. Rek’lect you owe me a pint
for bringing down your luggage. He, he! ask Tinker if I ain’t.”

The lady addressed as Mrs. Tinker at this moment made her
appearance, with a pipe and a paper of tobacco, for which she
had been despatched a minute before Miss Sharp’s arrival; and
she handed the articles over to Sir Pitt, who had taken his seat
by the fire.

‘‘Where’s the farden?” said he. “I gave you three-half-
pence; where’s the change, old Tinker P”’

“There,” replied Mrs. Tinker, flinging down the coin. “It’s
only baronets as cares about farthings.”

Sir Pitt Crawley has always been to me a stretch of
audacity which I have been unable to understand. But
it has been accepted ; and from this commencement of
Sir Pitt Crawley have grown the wonderful characters
of the Crawley family,—old Miss Crawley, the worldly,
wicked, pleasure-loving aunt, the Rev. Bute Crawley and
his wife, who are quite as worldly, the sanctimonious elder
son, who in truth is not less so, and Rawdon, who
ultimately becomes Becky’s husband,—who is the bad
hero of the book, as Dobbin is the good hero. They
are admirable; but it is quite clear that Thackeray had
known nothing of what was coming about them when he

H

98 THACKERAY. [oHaAr,

eaused Sir Pitt to eat his tripe with Mrs, Tinker in the
London dining-room.

There is a double story running through the book,
the parts of which are but lightly woven together, of
which the former tells us the life and adventures of that
singular young woman Becky Sharp, and the other the
troubles and ultimate success of our noble hero Captain
Dobbin. Though it be true that readers prefer, or pretend
to prefer, the romantic to the common in their novels,
and complain of pages which are defiled with that which
is low, yet I find that the absurd, the ludicrous, and even
the evil, leave more impression behind them than the
grand, the beautiful, or even the good. Dominie Sampson,
Dugald Dalgetty, and Bothwell are, I think, more re-
membered than Fergus MacIvor, than Ivanhoe himself,
or Mr. Butler the minister. It certainly came to pass
that, in spite of the critics, Becky Sharp became the first
attraction in Vanity Fair. When we speak now of
Vanity Fair, it is always to Becky that our thoughts
recur. She has made a position for herself in the world
of fiction, and is one of our established personages.

I have already said how she left school, throwing t the
« dixonary ” out of the window, like dust from her feet,
_.and was taken to spend a few halcyon weeks with her
friend Amelia Sedley, at the Sedley mansion in Russell
Square. There she meets a brother Sedley home from
India,—the immortal Jos,—at whom she began to set
her hitherto untried cap. Here we become acquainted
both with the Sedley and with the Osborne families,
with all their domestic affections and domestic snobbery,
and have to confess that the snobbery is stronger than the
affection. As we desire to love Amelia Sedley, we wish
that the people around her were less vulgar or less selfish,

HI.} VANITY FAIR. 99

especially we wish it in regard to that handsome young
fellow, George Osborne, whom she loves with her whole
heart. But with Jos Sedley we are inclined to be con-
tent, though he be fat, purse-proud, awkward, a drunkard,
and a coward, because we do not want anything better for
Becky. Becky does not want anything better for herself,
because the man has money. She has been born a pauper,
She knows herself to be but ill qualified to set up asa
beauty,—though by dint of cleverness she does succeed in
that afterwards. She has no advantages in regard to
friends or family as she enters lifé. “Shé must eam her
‘bread for herself. Young as she is, she loves money, and
has a great idea of the power of money. Therefore,
though Jos is distasteful at all points, she instantly makes
her attack. She fails, however, at any rate for the present.
She never becomes his wife, but at last she succeeds in
getting.some of his money. But before that time comes
she has many a suffering to endure, and many a triumph
to enjoy.

She goes to Sir Pitt Crawley as governess for his
second family, and is taken down to Queen’s Crawley in
the country. There her cleverness prevails, even with
the baronet, of whom I have just given Thackeray’s por-
trait. She keeps his accounts, and writes his letters, and
helps him to save money ; she reads with the elder sister
books they ought not to have read; she flatters the sancti-
monious son. In point of fact, she becomes all in all at
Queen’s Crawley, so that Sir Pitt himself falls in love
with her,—for there is reason to think that Sir Pitt may
soon become again a widower. But there also came down
to the baronet’s house, on an occasion of general enter-
taining, Captain Rawdon Crawley. Of course Becky sets
her cap at him, and of course succeeds, She always

H 2

100 THACKERAY. (CHAP.

succeeds. Though she is only the governess, he insists
upon dancing with her, to the neglect of all the young
ladies of the neighbourhood. They continue to walk
together by moonlight,—or starlight,—the great, heavy,
stupid, half-tipsy dragoon, and the intriguing, covetous,
altogether unprincipled young woman. And the two
young peopire absolutely come to love one another
in their way,—the heavy, stupid, fuddled dragoon,
and the false, covetous, altogether unprincipled young
woman.

The fat aunt Crawley is a maiden lady, very rich, and
Becky quite succeeds in gaining the rich aunt by her wiles.
The aunt becomes so fond of Becky down in the country,
that when she has to return to her own house in town,
sick from over-eating, she cannot be happy without taking
Becky with her. So Becky is installed in the house in
London, having been taken away abruptly from her pupils,
to the great dismay of the old lady’s long-established
resident companion. They-all fall in love with her; she
makes herself so charming, she is so clever ; she can even,
by help of a little care in dressing, become so picturesque !
Asall this goes on, the reader feels what a great personage
is Miss Rebecca Sharp.

Lady Crawley dies down in the country, while Becky
is still staying with his sister, who will not part with her.
Sir Pitt at once rushes up to town, before the funeral,
looking for consolation where only he can find it. Becky
brings him down word from his sister’s room that the old
lady is too ill to see him.

“So much the better,” Sir Pitt answered ; “I want to see you,
Mise Sharp. I want you back at Queen’s Crawley, miss,” the
baronet said. His eyes had such a strange look, and were fixed
upon her so stedfastly that Rebecca Sharp began almost to

IIt. | VANITY FATR. 101

tremble. Then she half promises, talks about the dear children,
and angles with the old man. “TI tell you I want you,” he says;
“I’m going back to the vuneral, will you come back ?—yes
or no?”

“JT daren’t. I don’t think—it wouldn’t be right—to be
alone —with yon, sir,” Becky said, seemingly in great
agitation.

“TIT say again, I want you. I can’t get on without you. I
didn’t see what it was till you went away. The house all goes
wrong. It’s not the same place. All my accounts has got
muddled again. You must come back. Do come back. Dear
Becky, do come.”

* Come,—as what, sir P” Rebecca gasped out.

“Come as Lady Crawley, if you like. There, will that zatisfy
you? Come back and be my wife. You’re vit for it. Birth be
hanged. You’re as good a lady as everI see. You've got more
brains in your little vinger than any baronet’s wife in the
country. Will you come? Yes or no?” Rebecca is startled,
but the old man goes on. “1’ll make you happy; zee if I don’t.
You shall do what you like, spend what you like, and have it
all your own way. I'll make you a settlement. I'll do every-
thing regular. Look here,” and the old man fell down on his
knees and leered at her like a satyr.

But Rebecca, though she had been angling, angling
for favour and love and power, had not expected this.
For once in her life she loses her presence of mind, and
exclaims: “ Oh Sir Pitt; oh sir; I—I’m married already !”
She has married Rawdon Crawley, Sir Pitt’s younger
son, Miss Crawley’s favourite among those of her family
who are looking for her money. But she keeps her secret
for the present, and writes a charming letter to the
Captain; “ Dearest,—Something tells me that we shall
conquer. You shall leave that odious regiment. Quit
gaming, racing, and be a good boy, and we shall all live
in Park Lane, and ma tazte shall leave us all her money.”

102 THACKERAY. (crap,

Ma, tante’s money has been in her mind all through, but
yet she loves him.

“Suppose the old lady doesn’t come to,” Rawdon said to hig
little wife as they sat together in the snug little Brompton
lodgings. She had been trying the new piano all the morning.
The new gloves fitted her toa nicety. The new shawl became
her wonderfully. The new rings glittered on her litile hands,
and the new watch ticked at her waist.

“7T’ll make your fortune,’ she said; and Delilah patted
Samson’s cheek.

“You can do anything,” he said, kissing the little hand. “By
Jove you can! and we'll drive down to the Star and Garter and
dine, by Jove!”

They were neither of them quite heartless at that
moment, nor did Rawdon ever become quite bad. Then
follow the adventures .of Becky. as a married woman,
through all of which there is a glimmer of love for her
stupid husband, while it is the real purpose of her heart
to get money how she may,—by her charms, by her
wit, by her lies, by her. readiness., She makes love to
everyone,—even to her sanctimonious brother-in-law, who
becomes Sir Pitt in his time,—and L_alw ays succeeds, But
in her lovemaking there is nothing of love. She gets
hold of that well-remembered old reprobate, the Marquis
of Steyne, who possesses the two valuable gifts of being
very dissolute and very rich, and from him she obtains
money and jewels to her heart’s desire. The abominations
of Lord Steyne are depicted in the strongest language of
which Vanity Fair admits. The reader’s hair stands almost
on end in horror at the wickedness of the two wretches,—at
her desire for money, sheer money ; and his for wicked-
ness, sheer wickedness. Then her husband finds her out,
--poor Rawdon! who with all his faults and thick-

111] VANITY FAIR. 103

headed stupidity, has become absolutely entranced by the
wiles of his little wife. He is carried off to a sponging-
house, in order that he may be out of the way, and, on
escaping unexpectedly from thraldom, finds the lord in his
wife’s drawing-room. Whereupon he thrashes the old lord,
nearly killing him; takes away the plunder which he finds
on his wife’s person, and hurries away to seek assistance
as to further revenge ;—for he is determined to shoot
the marquis, or to be shot. He goes to one Captain
Macmurdo, who is to act as his second, and there he pours
out his heart. ‘ You don’t know how fond I was of that
one,” Rawdon said, half-inarticulately. “Damme, f
followed her like a footman! I gave up everything I
had to her. I’m a beggar because I would marry her.
By Jove, sir, I’ve pawned my own watch to get her
anything she fancied. And she,—she’s been making
a purse for herself all the time, and grudged me a
hundred pounds to get me out of quod!” His friend
alleges that the wife may be innocent after all. “It
may be so,” Rawdon exclaimed sadly; “but this don’t
look very innocent!” And he showed the captain the
thousand-pound note which he had found in Becky’s
pocketbook.

But the marquis can do better than fight ; and Rawdon,
in spite of his true love, can do better than follow the
quarrel up to his own undoing. The marquis, on the
spur of the moment, gets the lady’s husband appointed
governor of Coventry Island, with a salary of three
thousand pounds a year; and poor Rawdon at last con-
descends to accept the appointment. He will not see his
wife again, but he makes her an allowance out of his
income.

In arranging all this, Thackeray is enabled to have a

104 THACKERAY. [ CHAP.

side tclow at the British way of distributing patronage,—
for the favour of which he was afterwards himself a can-
didate. He quotes as follows from The Royalist newspaper :
“ We bear that the governorship ’—of Coventry Island—
“has been offered to Colonel Rawdon Crawley, C.B., a
distinguished Waterloo officer. We need not only men
of acknowledged bravery, but men of administrative
talents to superintend the affairs of our colonies; and
we have no doubt that the gentleman selected by the
Colonial Office to fill the lamented vacancy which has
occurred at Coventry Island, is admirably calculated
for the post.” The reader, however, is aware that the
officer in question cannot write a sentence or speak two
words correctly.

Our heroine’s adventures are carried on much further,
but they cannot be given here in detail. To the end_she
is.the same,— utterly false, selfish, govetous, and successful,
To have made such a woman Teally in love would have
been a mistake. Her husband she likes best,—because he
is, or was, her own. But there is no man so foul, SO
wicked, so unattractive, but that she can ‘fawn over him
for money and jewels. There are women to whéni nothing
is nasty, either in person, language, scenes, actions, or
principle,—and Becky is one of them; and yet she is
herself attractive. A most wonderful sketch, for the
perpetration of which all Thackeray’s power of combined
indignation and humour was necessary !

The story of Amelia and her two lovers, George
Oxborne and Captain, or as he came afterwards to be,
Major, and Colonel Dobbin, is less interesting, simply
because goodness and eulogy are less exciting than
wickedness and censure. Amelia is a true, honest-hearted,
thoroughly English young woman, who loves her love

1.) VANITY FAIR. 105

because he is grand,—to her eyes,—and loving him, loves
him with all her heart. Readers have said that she is
silly, only because she is not heroic. I do not know that
she is more silly than many young ladies whom we who
are old have loved in our youth, or than those whom our
sons are loving at the present time. Readers complain of
Amelia because she is absolutely true to nature. There are no
Raffaellistic touches, no added graces, no divine romance.
She is feminine all over, and British,—loving, true,
thoroughly unselfish, yet with a taste for having things
comfortable, forgiving, quite capable of jealousy, but prone
to be appeased at once, at the first kiss; quite convinced
that her lover, her husband, her children are the people in
all the world to whom the greatest consideration is duc.
Such a one is sure to be the dupe of a Becky Sharp,
should a Becky Sharp come in her way,—as is the case
with so many sweet Amelias whom we have known. But
in a matter of love she is sound enough and sensible
enough,—and she is as true as steel. I know no trait in
Amelia which a man would be ashamed to find in his own
daughter.

She marries her George Osborne, who, to tell the truth
of him, is but a poor kind of fellow, though he is a brave
soldier. He thinks much of his own person, and is selfish.
Thackeray puts in a touch or two here and there by
which he is made to be odious. He would rather give a
present to himself than to the girl who loved him.
Nevertheless, when her father is ruined he marries her,
and he fights bravely at Waterloo, and is killed. “No
more firing was heard at Brussels. The pursuit rolled
miles away. Darkness came down on the field and the
city,—and Amelia was praying for George, who was lying
on his face, dead, with a bullet through his heart.”

106 THACKERAY. (CHAP.

Then follows the long courtship of Dobbin, the true
hero,—he who has been the friend of George since their
old school-days ; who has lived with him and served him,
and has also loved Amelia. But he has loved her,—as
one man may love another,—solely with a view to the
profit of his friend. He has known all along that George
and Amelia have been engaged to each other as boy and
girl, George would have neglected her, but Dobbin
would not allow it. George would have jilted the girl
who loved him, but Dobbin would not let him. He had
nothing to get for himself, but loving her as he did, it was
the work of his life to get for her all that she wanted.

George is shot at Waterloo, and then come fifteen
years of widowhood,—fifteen years during which Becky is
carrying on her manceuvres,—fifteen years during which
Amelia cannot bring herself to accept the devotion of
the old captain, who becomes at last a colonel. But at
the end she is won. ‘The vessel is in port. He has got
the prize he has been trying for all his life. The bird
has come in at last. There it is, with its head on its
shoulder, billing and cooing clean up to his heart, with
soft outstretched fluttering wings. This is what he has
asked for every day and hour for eighteen years. This is
what he has pined after. Here it is—the summit, the
end, the last page of the third volume.”

The reader as he closes the book has on his mind a
strong conviction, the strongest possible conviction, that
among men George is as weak and Dobbin as noble as
any that he has met in literature; and that among women
Amelia is as true and Becky as vile as any he has en-
countered. Of so much he will be conscious. In addition
to this he will unconsciously have found that every page
he has read will have been of interest to him. There has

111. | VANITY FAIR. 107

been no padding, no longueurs; every bit will have had
its weight with him. And he will find too at the end, if
he will think of it—though readers, I fear, seldom think
much of this in regard to books they have read—that the
lesson taught in every page has been good. ‘There may
be details of evil painted so as to disgust,—painted
almost too plainly,—but none painted so as to allure.

CHAPTER IV.
PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES.

Tue absence of the heroic was, in Thackeray, so palpable
to Thackeray himself that in his original preface to
Pendennis, when he began to be aware that his reputation
was made, he tells his public what they may expect and
what they may not, and makes his joking complaint of
the readers of his time because they will not endure with
patience the true picture of a natural man. “Even the
gentlemen of our age,” he says,—adding that the story of
Pendennis is an attempt to describe one of them, just as
he is,—“ even those we cannot show as they are with the
notorious selfishness of their time and their education.
Since the author of Zum Jones was buried, no writer of
fiction among us has been permitted to depict to his
utmost power a MAN. We must shape him, and give him
a certain conventional temper.” Then he rebukes his
audience because they will not listen to the truth. “ You
will not hear what moves in the real world, what passes
in society, in the clubs, colleges, mess-rooms,—what is the
life and talk of your sons.” You want the Raffaellistic
touch, or that of some painter of horrors equally removed
from the truth. I tell you how a man really does act,—
as did Fielding with Tom Jon:s,—-but it does not satisfy
you. You will not sympathise with this young man of

cHAP. IvV.| PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 106

mine, this Pendennis, because he is neither angel nor imp.
If it be so, let it be so. I will not paint for you angels or
imps, because I do not see them. The young man of the
(lay, whom I do see, and of whom I know the inside and
the out thoroughly, him I have painted for you; and
here he is, whether you like the picture or not. This is
what Thackeray meant, and, having this in his mind, he
produced Pendennis.

The object of a novel should be to instruct in
morals while it amuses. I cannot think but that every
novelist who has thought much of his art will have
realised as much as that for himself. Whether this may
best be done by the transcendental or by the common-
place is the question which it more behoves the reader
than the author to answer, because the author may be
fairly sure that he who can do the one will not, probably
cannot, do the other. If a lad be only five feet high he
does not try to enlist in the Guards. Thackeray com-
plains that many ladies have “zremonstrated and sub-
scribers left him,” because of his realistic tendency.
Nevertheless he has gone on with his work, and, in
Pendennis, has painted a young man as natural as Tom
Jones. Had he expended himself im the attempt, he
could not have drawn a Master of Ravenswood.

It has to be admitted that Pendennis is not a fine
fellow. He is not as weak, as selfish, as untrustworthy as
that George Osborne whom Amelia married in Vanity
Fair; but nevertheless, he is weak, and selfish, and
untrustworthy. He is not such a one as a father would
wish to see his son, or a mother to welcome as a lover for
her daughter. But then, fathers are so often doomed to
find their sons not all that they wish, and mothers to see
their girls falling in love with young men who are not

110 THACKERAY. [cHAP,

Paladins. In our individual lives we are contented to
endure an admixture of evil, which we should resent if
imputed to us in the general. We presume ourselves to
be truth-speaking, noble in our sentiments, generous in
our actions, modest and unselfish, chivalrous and devoted.
But we forgive and pass over in silence a few delin-
quencies among ourselves. What boy at school ever is a
coward,—in the general? What gentleman ever tells a lie?
What young lady is greedy? We take it for granted, as
though they were fixed rules in life, that our boys
from our public schools look us in the face and are manly ;
that our gentlemen tell the truth as a matter of course ;
and that our young ladies are refined and unselfish.
Thackeray is always protesting that it is not so, and that
no good is to be done by blinking the truth. He knows
that we have our little home experiences. Let us have
the facts out, and mend what is bad if we can. This
novel of Pendennis is one of his loudest protests to this
effect.

I will not attempt to tell the story of Pendennis, how
his mother loved him, how he first came to be brought up
together with Laura Bell, how he thrashed the other boys
when he was a boy, and how he fell in love with Miss
Fotheringay, née Costigan, and was determined to marry
her while he was still a hobbledehoy, how he went up to
Boniface, that well-known college at Oxford, and there
did no good, spending money which he had not got, and
learning to gamble. The English gentleman, as we know,
never lies; but Pendennis is not quite truthful; when
the college tutor, thinking that he hears the rattling of
dice, makes his way into Pen’s room, Pen and his two
companions are found with three Homers before them,
and Pen asks the tutor with great gravity ; “ What was

Iv. | PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. lil

the present condition of the river Scamander, and whether
it was navigable or no?” He tells his mother that,
during a certain vacation he must Stay up and read,
instead of coming home,—but, nevertheless, he goes up to
London to amuse himself. The reader is soon made to
understand that, though Pen may be a fine gentleman, he
is not trustworthy. But he repents and comes home, and
kisses his mother; only, alas! he will always be kissing
somebody else also.

The story of the Amorys and the Claverings, and that
wonderful French cook M. Alcide Mirobolant, forms one
of those delightful digressions which Thackeray scatters
through his novels rather than weaves into them. They
generally have but little to do with the story itself, and
are brought in only as giving scope for some incident to
the real hero or heroine. But in this digression Pen is
very much concerned indeed, for he js brought to the
very verge of matrimony with that peculiarly disagreeable
lady Miss Amory. He does escape at last, but only
within a few pages of the end, when we are made un-
happy by the lady’s victory over that poor young sinner
Foker, with whom we have all come to sympathise, in
spite of his vulgarity and fast propensities. She would
to the last fain have married Pen, in whom she believes,
thinking that he would make a name for her, “Il me
faut des émotions,” says Blanche. Whereupon the author,
as he leaves her, explains the nature of this Miss
Amory’s feelings. “For this young lady was not able
to carry out any emotion to the full, but had a sham
enthusiasm, a sham hatred, a sham love, a sham taste,
a sham grief; each of which flared and shone very
vehemently for an instant, but subsided and gave place
to the next sham emotion,” Thackeray, when he drew

112 THACKERAY. (onar.

this portrait, must certainly have had some special young
lady in his view. But though we are made unhappy for
Foker, Foker too escapes 6 last, and Blanche, with her
emotions, marries that very doubtful nobleman Comte
Montmorenci de Valentinois.

But all this of Miss Amory is but an episode. The
purport of the story is the way in which the hero is
made to enter upon the world, subject as he has been to
the sweet teaching of his mother, and subject as he is
made to be to the worldly lessons of his old uncle the
major. Then he is ill, and nearly dies, and his mother
comes up to nurse him. And there is his friend War-
rington, of whose family down in Suffolk we shall have
heard something when we have read The Virginians,—one
I think of the finest characters, as it is certainly one of
the most touching, that Thackeray ever drew. War-
rington, and Pen’s mother, and Laura are our hero’s
better angels,—angels so good as to make us wonder
that a creature so weak should have had such angels about
him ; though we are driven to confess that their affection
and loyalty for him are natural. There is a melancholy
beneath the roughness of Warrington, and a feminine
softness combined with the reticent manliness of the man,
which have endeared him to readers beyond perhaps any
character in the book. Major Pendennis has become
immortal. Selfish, worldly, false, padded, caring alto-
gether for things mean and poor in themselves; still the
reader likes him. It is not quite all for himself. To Pen
he is good,—to Pen who is the head of his family, and
to come after him as the Pendennis of the day. To Pen
and to Pen’s mother he is beneficent after his lights. In
whatever he undertakes it is so contrived that the readex
shall in some degree sympathise with him. And go it is

Tr, | PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 113

with poor old Costigan, the drunken Irish captain, Liss
Fotheringay’s papa. He was not a pleasant person. “ We
have witnessed the déshabille of Major Pendennis,” says
our author ; “will any one wish to be valet-de-chambre to
our other hero, Costigan?’ It would seem that the cap-
tain, before issuing from his bedroom, scented himself
with otto of whisky.” Yet there is a kindliness about
him which softens our hearts, though in truth he is
very careful that the kindness shall always be shown to
himself.

Among these people Pen makes his way to the end of
the novel, coming near to shipwreck on various occasions,
and always deserving the shipwreck which he has almost
encountered. ‘Then there will arise the question whether
it might not have been better that he should be altogether
shipwrecked, rather than housed comfortably with such a
wife as Laura, and left to that enjoyment of happiness
forever after, which is the normal heaven prepared for
heroes and heroines who have done their work well
through three volumes. It is almost the only instance
in all Thackeray’s works in which this state of bliss
is reached. George Osborne, who is the beautiful lover
in Vanity Fair, is killed almost before our eyes, on the
field of battle, and we feel that Nemesis has with justice
taken hold of him. Poor old Dobbin does marry the
widow, after fifteen years of further service, when we
know him to be a middle-aged man and her a middle-aged
woman. That glorious Paradise of which I have spoken
requires a freshness which can hardly be attributed to
the second marriage of a widow who has been fifteen
years mourning for her first husband. Clive Newcome,
‘the first young man,” if we may so call him, of the
novel which I shall mention just now, is carried so far

i

114 THACKERAY. [ CHAP.

beyond his matrimonial elysium that we are allowed to
see too plainly how far from true may be those promises
of hymeneal happiness forever after. The cares of
married life have settled down heavily upon his young
head before we leave him. He not only marries, but
loses his wife, and is left a melancholy widower with
his son. Esmond and Beatrix certainly reach no such
elysium as that of which we are speaking. But
Pen, who surely deserved a Nemesis, though per-
haps not one so black as that demanded by George
Osborne’s delinquencies, is treated as though he had
been passed through the fire, and had come out,—if
not pure gold, still gold good enough for goldsmiths.
“And what sort of a husband will this Pendennis be?”
This is the question asked by the author himself at the
end of the novel; feeling, no doubt, some hesitation as
to the justice of what he had just done. ‘And what
sort of a husband will this Pendennis be?” many a
reader will ask, doubting the happiness of such a marriage
and the future of Laura, The querists are referred to
that lady herself, who, seeing his faults and wayward
moods—seeing and owning that there are better men than
he—loves him always with the most constant affection.
The assertion could be made with perfect confidence, but
is not to the purpose. That Laura’s affection should be
constant, no one would doubt; but more than that is
wanted for happiness. How about Pendennis and his
constancy ?

The Newcomes, which I bracket in this chapter with
Pendennis, was not written till after Zsmond, and
appeared between that novel and The Virginians, which
was a sequel to Hsmond. It is supposed to be edited by
Pen, whose own adventures we have just completed, and

Iv.] PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 115

is commenced by that celebrated night passed by Colonel
Newcome and his boy Clive at the Cave of Harmony,
during which the colonel is at first so pleasantly received
and so genially entertained, but from which he is at last
banished, indignant at the iniquities of our drunken old
friend Captain Costigan, with whom we had become
intimate in Pen’s own memoirs. The boy Clive is
described as being probably about sixteen. At the end
of the story he has run through the adventures of his
early life, and is left a melancholy man, a widower, one
who has suffered the extremity of misery from a step-
mother, and who is wrapped up in the only son that is
left to him,—as had been the case with his father at the
beginning of the novel. Zhe Newcomes, therefore, like
Thackeray’s other tales, is rather a slice from the bio-
graphical memoirs of a family, than a romance or novel
in itself.

It is full of satire from the first to the last page. Every
word of it seems to have been written to show how vile
and poor a place this world is; how prone men are to
deceive, how prone to be deceived. ‘There is a scene in
which “his Excellency Rummun Lol, otherwise his High-
ness Rummun Loll,” is introduced to Colonel Newcome,—
or rather presented,—for the two men had known each
other before, All London was talking of Rummun Loll,
taking him for an Indian prince, but the colonel, who
had served in India, knew better, Rummun Loll was
no more than a merchant, who had made a precarious
fortune by doubtful means, All the girls, nevertheless,
are running after his Excellency. ‘“‘He’s known to have
two wives already in India,” says Barnes Newcome ;
“but, by gad, for a settlement, I believe some of the
girls here would marry him,” We have a delightful

12

né THACKERAY. (omar.

illustration of the London girls, with their bare necks and
shoulders, sitting round Rummun Loll and worshipping
him as he reposes on his low settee. There are a dozen of
them so enchanted that the men who wish to get a sight
of the Rummun are quite kept at a distance. This is
satire on the women. A few pages on we come upon a
clergyman who is no more real than Rummun Loll. The
elergyman, Charles Honeyman, had married the colonel’s
sister and had lost his wife, and now the brothers-in-law
meet. “* Poor, poor Emma!’ exclaimed the ecclesiastic,
zasting his eyes towards the chandelier and passing a
white cambric pocket-handkerchief gracefully before them.
No man in London understood the ring business or the
pocket-handkerchief business better, or smothered his
emotion more beautifully. ‘In the gayest moments, in
the giddiest throng of fashion, the thoughts of the past
will rise; the departed will be among us still. But this
is not the strain wherewith to greet the friend newly
arrived on our shores. How it rejoices me to behold
you in old England.’” And so the satirist goes on with
Mr. Honeyman the clergyman. Mr. Honeyman the clergy-
man has been already mentioned, in that extract made in
our first chapter from Lovel the Widower. It was he who
assisted another friend, “with his wheedling tongue,” in
inducing Thackeray to purchase that ‘‘ neat little literary
paper,”—called then The Museum, but which was in truth
The National Standard. In describing Barnes Newcome,
the colonel’s relative, Thackeray in the same scene attacks
the sharpness of the young men of business of the present
day. ‘There were, or were to be, some transactions with
Ruiamun Loll, and Barnes Newcome, being in doubt,
asks the colonel a question or two as to the certainty of the
Rummun’s money, much to the colonel’s disgust. “The

Iv. ] PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 117

young man of business had dropped his drawl or kis
languor, and was speaking quite unaffectedly, good-
naturedly, and selfishly. Had you talked to him for «
week you would not have made him understand the scorn
and loathing with which the colonel regarded him. Here
was a young fellow as keen as the oldest curmudgeon,
—a lad with scarce a beard to his chin, that would
pursue his bond as rigidly as Shylock.” “ Barnes New-
come never missed a church,” he goes on, “or dressing
for dinner. He never kept a tradesman waiting for his
money. He seldom drank too much, and never was late
for business, or huddled over his toilet, however brief his
sleep or severe his headache. In a word, he was as
scrupulously whited as any sepulchre in the whole bills
of mortality.” Thackeray had lately seen some Barnes
Newcome when he wrote that.

It is all sative; but there is generally a touch of pathos
even through the satire. It is satire when Miss Quigley,
the governess in Park Street, falls in love with the old
colonel after some dim fashion of her own. “ When she
is walking with her little charges in the Park, faint signals
of welcome appear on her wan cheeks. She knows the
dear colonel amidst a thousand horsemen.” The colone)
had drunk a glass of wine with her after his stately fashion,
and the foolish old maid thinks too much of it, Then we
are told how she knits purses for him, ‘‘as she sits alone
in the schoolroom,—high up in that lone house, when the
little ones are long since asleep,—before her dismal little
tea-tray, and her little desk containing her mother’s letters
and ber mementoes of home.” Miss Quigley is an ass,
but we are made to sympathise entirely with the ass,
because of that morsel of pathos as to her mvthers

letters.

118 THACKERAY. [ CHAP.

Clive Newcome, our hero, who is a second Pen, but a
better fellow, is himself a satire on young men,—on young
men who are idle and ambitious at the same time. He 1s
a painter; but, instead of being proud of his art, is half
ashamed of it,—because not being industrious he has not,
while yet young, learned to excel. He is “doing” a
portrait of Mrs. Pendennis, Laura, and thus speaks of
his business. “No. 666,”—he is supposed to be quoting
from the catalogue of the Royal Academy for the year,—
“No. 666. Portrait of Joseph Muggins, Esq., Newcome,
George Street. No. 979. Portrait of Mrs. Muggins on
her gray pony, Newcome. No. 579. Portrait of Joseph
Muggins, Esq.’s dog Toby, Newcome. This is what I am
fit for. These are the victories I have set myself on
achieving. Oh Mrs. Pendennis! isn’t it humiliating?
Why isn’t there a war? Why haven’t Iagenius? There
is a painter who lives hard by, and who begs me to come
and look at his work. He is in the Muggins line too.
He gets his canvases with a good light upon them; ex-
eludes the contemplation of other objects; stands beside
his picture in an attitude himself; and thinks that he
and they are masterpieces. Oh me, what drivelling
wretches we are! Fame !—except that of just the one or two,
—what’s the use of it?” In all of which Thackeray is
speaking his own feelings about himself as well as the
world at large. What’s the use of it all? Oh vanitas
vanitatum! Oh vanity and vexation of spirit! “ So
Clive Newcome,” he says afterwards, “lay on a bed of
down and tossed and tumbled there. He went to fine
dinners, and sat silent over them; rode fine horses, and
black care jumped up behind the moody horseman.” As
I write this I have before me a letter from Thackeray to a

Iv. | PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMES. 119

friend describing his own success when Vanity Fair was
coming out, full of the same feeling. He is making money,
but he spends it so fast that he never has any; and as for
the opinions expressed on his books, he cares little for
what he hears. There was always present to him a feeling
of black care seated behind the horseman,—and would
have been equally so had there been no real care present
to him. A sardonic melancholy was the characteristic
most common to him,—which, however, was relieved by
an always present capacity for instant frolic. It was these
attributes combined which made him of all satirists the
most humorous, and of all humorists the most satirical.
It was these that produced the Osbornes, the Dobbins,
the Pens, the Clives, and the Newcomes, whom, when he
loved them the most, he could not save himself from
describing as mean and unworthy. A somewhat heroic
hero of romance,—such a one, let us say, as Waverley, or
Lovel in The Antiguary, or Morton in Old Mortality,—
was revolting to him, as lacking those foibles which human
nature seemed to him to demand.

The story ends with two sad tragedies, neither of which
would have been demanded by the story, had not such
sadness been agreeable to the author’s own idiosynerasy.
The one is the ruin of the old colonel’s fortunes, he
having allowed himself to be enticed into bubble specula-
tions; and the other is the loss of all happiness, and even
comfort, to Clive the hero, by the abominations of his
mother-in-law. The woman is so iniquitous, and so
tremendous in her iniquities, that she rises to tragedy.
Who does not know Mrs. Mack the Campaigner? Why
at the end of his long story should Thackeray have
married his hero to so lackadaisical a heroine as poor

120 THACKERAY. | CHAD.

little Rosey, or brought on the stage such a she-demon
as Rosey’s mother? But there is the Campaigner in all
her vigour, a marvel of strength of composition,—one of
the most vividly drawn characters in fiction ;—but a
woman so odious that one is induced to doubt whether
she should have been depicted.

The other tragedy is altogether of a different kind,
and though unnecessary to the story, and contrary to that
practice of story-telling which seems to demand that
calamities to those personages with whom we are to
sympathise should not be brought in at the close of a
work of fiction, is so beautifully told that no lover of
Thackeray’s work would be willing to part with it. The
old colonel, as we have said, is ruined by speculation,
and in his ruin is brought to accept the alms of the
brotherhood of the Grey Friars. Then we are introduced
to the Charter House, at which, as most of us know,
there still exists a brotherhood of the kind. He dons
the gown,—this old colonel, who had always been com-
fortable in his means, and latterly apparently rich,—and
occupies the single room, and eats the doled bread, and
among his poor brothers sits in the chapel of his order.
The description is perhaps as fine as anything that
Thackeray ever did. The gentleman is still the gentle-
man, with all the pride of gentry ;—but not the less is
he the humble bedesman, aware that he is living upon
charity, not made to grovel by any sense of shame, but
knowing that, though his normal pride may be left to
him, an outward demeanour of humility is befitting.

And then he dies. “At the usual evening hour the
chapel bell began to toll, and Thomas Newcome’s hands
outside the bed feebly beat time,—and, just as the last

Iv, | PENDENNIS AND THE NEWCOMBES. 121

bell struck, a peculiar sweet smile shone over his face,
and he lifted up his head a little, and quickly said,
‘Adsum,’—and fell back. It was the word we used at
school when names were called ; and, lo, he whose heart
was as that of a little child had answered to his name,
and stood in the presence of the Master !”

CHAPTER Y.
ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS.

THE novel with which we are now going to deal I
regard as the greatest work that Thackeray did. Though
I do not hesitate to compare himself with himself, I will
make no comparison between him and others; I therefore
abstain from assigning to Hsmond any special niche
among prose fictions in the English language, but I
rank it so high as to justify me in placing him among
the small number of the highest class of English novelists.
Much as I think of Barry Lyndon and Vanity Fair,
I cannot quite say this of them; but, as a chain is not
stronger than its weakest link, so is a poet, or a dramatist,
or a novelist to be placed in no lower level than that
which he has attained by his highest sustained flight.
The excellence which has been reached here Thackeray
achieved, without doubt, by giving a greater amount of
forethought to the work he had before him than had
been his wont, When we were young we used to be told,
in our house at home, that “elbow-grease” was the one
essential necessary to getting a tough piece of work well
‘done. Ifa mahogany table was to be made to shine,
it was elbow-grease that the operation needed. Fore-
thought is the elbow-grease which a novelist,—or poet,
or dramatist,—requires. It is not only his plot that has

cHaPp.v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 123

to be turned and re-turned in his mind, not his plot
chiefly, but he has to make himself sure of his situations,
of his characters, of his effects, so that when the time
comes for hitting the nail he may know where to hit it
on the head,—so that he may himself understand the
passion, the calmness, the virtues, the vices, the rewards
and punishments which he means to explain to others,—
so that his proportions shall be correct, and he be
saved from the absurdity of devoting two-thirds of his
book to the beginning, or two-thirds to the completion
of his task. It is from want of this special labour, more
frequently than from intellectual deficiency, that the
tellers of stories fail so often to hit their nails on the
head. To think of a story is much harder work than to
write it. The author can sit down with the pen in his
hand for a given time, and produce a certain number of
words. That is comparatively easy, and if he have a con-
science in regard to his task, work will be done regularly.
But to think it over as you lie in bed, or walk about,
or sit cosily over your fire, to turn it all in your thoughts,
and make the things fit,—that requires elbow-grease of
the mind. The arrangement of the words is as though
you were walking simply along a road. The arrange-
ment of your story is as though you were carrying a sack
of flour while you walked. Fielding had carried his sack
of flour before he wrote Tom Jones, and Scott his before
he produced Ivanhoe. So had Thackeray done,—a very
heavy sack of flour,—in creating Esmond. In Vanity Fair,
in Pendennis, and in The Newcomes, there was more of that
mere wandering in which no heavy burden was borne.
The richness of the author’s mind, the beauty of his
language, his imagination and perception of character are
all there. For that which was lovely he has shown his love,

124 THACKERAY. (oHar.

and for the hateful his hatred ; but, nevertheless, they are
comparatively idle books, His only work, as far as I can
judge them, in which there is no touch of idleness, is
Esmond. Barry Lyndon is consecutive, and has the well-
sustained purpose of exhibiting a finished rascal; but
Barry Lyndon is not quite the same from beginning te
end, All his full-fledged novels, except Esmond, contain
rather strings of incidents and memoirs of individuals,
than a completed story. But Hsmond is a whole from
beginning to end, with its tale well told, its purpose deve-
loped, its moral brought home,—and its nail hit well on
the head and driven in.

I told Thackeray once that it was not only his best
work, but so much the best, that there was none second
to it. “That was what I intended,” he said, “ but I have
failed. Nobody reads it. After all, what does it matter?”
he went on after awhile. “If they like anything, one
ought to be satisfied. After all, Esmond was a prig.”
Then he laughed and changed the subject, not caring
to dwell on thoughts painful to him. The elbow-
grease of thinking was always distasteful to him, and
had no doubt been so when he conceived and catried out
this work.

To the ordinary labour necessary for such a novel he
added very much by his resolution to write it in a style
different, not only from that which he had made his own,
but from that also which belonged to the time. He had
devoted himself to the reading of the literature of Queen
Anne’s reign, and having chosen to throw his story into
that period, and to create in it personages who were to be
peculiarly concerned with the period, he resolved to use as
the vehicle for his story the forms of expression then
prevalent. No one who has not tried it can understand

v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 125

how great is the difficulty of mastering a phase of one’s
own language other than that which habit has made
familiar. To write in another language, if the language
be sufficiently known, is a much less arduous undertaking.
The lad who attempts to write his essay in Ciceronian
Latin struggles to achieve a style which is not indeed
common to him, but is more common than any other he
has become acquainted with in that tongue. But Thackeray
in his work had always to remember his Swift, his Steele,
and his Addison, and to forget at the same time the modes
of expression which the day had adopted. ‘Whether he
asked advice on the subject, [donot know. But I feel sure
that if he did he must have been counselled against it. Let
my reader think what advice he would give to any writer on
such a subject. Probably he asked no advice, and would
have taken none. No doubt he found himself, at first
imperceptibly, gliding into a phraseology which had at-
tractions for his ear, and then probably was so charmed
with the peculiarly masculine forms of sentences which
thus became familiar to him, that he thought it would
be almost as difficult to drop them altogether as altogether
to assume the use of them. And if he could dogo suc-
cessfully, how great would be the assistance given to the
local colouring which is needed for a novel in prose, the
scene of which is thrown far back from the writer’s
period! Were I to write a poem about Coeur de Lion I
should not mar my poem by using the simple language of
the day; but if I write a prose story of the time, I cannot
altogether avoid some attempt at far-away quaintnesses in
language. To call a purse a “ gypsire,” and to begin your
little speeches with “ Marry come up,” or to finish them
with “Quotha,” are but poor attempts. But even they
have had their effect. Scott did the best he could with his

126 THACKERAY. [omar,

Coeur de Lion. When we look to it we find that it was
but little ; though in his hands it passed for much. “ By
my troth,” said the knight, “thou hast sung well and
heartily, and in high praise of thine order.” We doubt
whether he achieved any similarity to the language of the
time; but still, even in the little which he attempted
there was something of the picturesque. But how much
more would be done if in very truth the whole language
of a story could be thrown with correctness into the form
of expression used at the time depicted ?

It was this that Thackeray tried in his Esmond, and
he has done it almost without a flaw. The time in ques-
tion is near enough to us, and the literature sufficiently
familiar to enable us to judge. Whether folk swore by
their troth in the days of king Richard I. we do not
know, but when we read Swift’s letters, and Addison’s
papers, or Defoe’s novels we do catch the veritable sounds
of Queen Anne’s age, and can say for ourselves whether
Thackeray has caught them correctly or not. No reader
can doubt that he has done so. Nor is the reader ever
struck with the affectation of an assumed dialect. The
words come as though they had been written naturally,
—though not natural to the middle of the nineteenth
century. It was a tour de force; and successful as such
a tour de force so seldom is. But though Thackeray
was successful in adopting the tone he wished to assume,
he never quite succeeded, as far as my ear can judge, in
altogether dropping it again.

And yet it has to be remembered that though Esmond
deals with the times of Queen Anne, and “copies the
language” of the time, as Thackeray himself says in
the dedication, the story is not supposed to have been
written till the reign of George IJ. Esmond in his

v. | ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 127

narrative speaks of Fielding and Hogarth, who did their
best work under George II. The idea is that Henry
Esmond, the hero, went out to Virginia after the events
told, and there wrote the memoir in the form of an auto-
biography. The estate of Castlewood in Virginia had
been given to the Esmond family by Charles I., and
this Esmond, our hero, finding that expatriation would
best suit both his domestic happiness and his political
difficulties—as the reader of the book will understand
might be the case,—settles himself in the colony, and
there writes the history of his early life. He retains
the manners, and with the manners the language of his
youth. He lives among his own people, a country gen-
tleman with a broad domain, mixing but little with the
world beyond, and remains an English gentleman of
the time of Queen Anne. The story is continued in
The Virginians, the name given to a record of two lads
who were grandsons of Harry Esmond, whose names are
Warrington. Before The Virginians appeared we had
already become acquainted with a scion of that family,
the friend of Arthur Pendennis, a younger son of Sir
Miles Warrington, of Suffolk. Henry Esmond’s daughter
had in a previous generation married a younger son of
the then baronet. This is mentioned now to show the
way in which Thackeray’s mind worked afterwards upon
the details and characters which he had originated in
Esmond.

It is not my purpose to tell the story here, but rather to
explain the way in which it is written, to show how it
differs from other stories, and thus to explain its effect.
Harry Esmond, who tells the story, is of course the hero.
There are two heroines who equally command our sym-
pathy,—Lady Castlewood the wife of Harry’s kinsman,

128 THACKERAY. [cHaP.

and her daughter Beatrix. Thackeray himself declared
the man to be a prig, and he was not altogether wrong.
Beatrix, with whom throughout the whole book he is in
love, knew him well. “Shall I be frank with you,
Harry,” she says, when she is engaged to another suitor,
“and say that if you had not been down on your
knees and so humble, you might have fared better
with me? A woman of my spirit, cousin, is to be won
by gallantry, and not by sighs and rueful faces. All
the time you are worshipping and singing hymns to me,
I know very well I am no goddess.” And again:
“ As for you, you want a woman to bring your slippers
and cap, and to sit at your feet and cry, O caro,
caro! O bravo! whilst you read your Shakespeares and
Miltons and stuff.” He was a prig, and the girl he loved:
knew him, and being quite of another way of thinking
herself, would have nothing to say to him in the way of
love. But without something of the aptitudes of a prig
the character which the author intended could not have
been drawn. There was to be courage,—military courage,
—and that propensity to fighting which the tone of the
age demanded in a finished gentleman. Esmond there-
fore is ready enough to use his sword. But at the same
time he has to live as becomes one whose name is in some
degree under a cloud ; for though he be not in truth an
illegitimate offshoot of the noble family which is his, and
though he knows that he is not so, still he has to live as
though he were. He becomes a soldier, and it was just
then that our army was accustomed “ to swear horribly
in Flanders.” But Esmond likes his books, and cannot
swear or drink like other soldiers. Nevertheless he has
a sort of liking for fast ways in others, knowing that
such are tne ways of a gallant cavalier. There is a

v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 129

melancholy over his life which makes him always, to
himself and to others, much older than his years. He is
well aware that, being as he is, it is impossible that
Beatrix should love him. Now aud then there is a dash
of lightness about him, as though he had taught himself
in his philosophy that even sorrow may be borne with a
smile,—as though there was something in him of the
Stoie’s doctrine, which made him feel that even dis
appointed love should not be seen to wound too deep.
But still when he smiles, even when he indulges in some
little pleasantry, there is that garb of melancholy over him
which always makes a man a prig. But he is a gentle-
man from the crown of his head to the sole of his foot.
Thackeray had let the whole power of his intellect
apply itself to a conception of the character of a gentle-
man. This man is brave, polished, gifted with that old-
fashioned courtesy which ladies used to love, true as
steel, loyal as faith himself, with a power of self-abnega-
tion which astonishes the criticising reader when he finds
such a virtue carried to such an extent without seeming to
be unnatural. To draw the picture of a man and say that
he is gifted with all the virtues is easy enough,—easy
enough to describe him as performing all the virtues.
The difficulty is to put your man on his legs, and make
him move about, carrying his virtues with a natural gait,
so that the reader shall feel that he is becoming acquainted
with flesh and blood, not with a wooden figure. The
virtues ave all there with Henry Esmond, and the flesh
and blood also, so that the reader believes in them. But
still there is left a flavour of the character which
Thackeray himself tasted when he called his hero a prig.
The two heroines, Lady Castlewood and Beatrix, are

mother and daughter, of whom the former is in love with
K

130 THACKERAY. [oHap,

Esmond, and the latter is loved by him. Fault has been
found with the story, because of the unnatural rivalry,—
because it has been felt that a mother’s solicitude for her
daughter should admit of no such juxtaposition. But the
criticism has come, I think, from those who have failed
to understand, not from those who have understood, the
tale ;—not because they have read it, but because they
have not read it, and have only looked at it or heard of
it. Lady Castlewood is perhaps ten years older than the
boy Esmond, whom she first finds in her husband’s house,
and takes as a protégé; and from the moment in which
she finds that he is in love with her own daughter, she
does her best to bring about a marriage between them. Her
husband is alive, and though he is a drunken brute,—
after the manner of lords of that time,—she is thoroughly
loyal to him. The little touches, of which the woman is
herself altogether unconscious, that gradually turn a love
for the boy into a love for the man, are told so delicately,
that it is only at last that the reader perceives what has
in truth happened to the woman. She is angry with
him, grateful to him, careful over him, gradually con-
scious of all his worth, and of all that he does to her and
hers, till at last her heart is unable to resist. But then
she is a widow ;—and Beatrix has declared that her
ambition will not allow her to marry so humble a swain,
and Esmond has become,—as he says of himself when
he calls himself “an old gentleman,”—“ the guardian of
all the family,” “ fit to be the grandfather of you all.”
The character of Lady Castlewood has required more
delicacy in its manipulation than perhaps any other
which Thackeray has drawn. There is a mixture in it of
self-negation and of jealousy, of gratefulness of heart and
of the weary thoughtfulness of age, of occasional spright-

v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 131

liness with deep melancholy, of injustice with a thorough
appreciation of the good around her, of personal weakness,
—as shown always in her intercourse with her children,
and of personal strength,—as displayed when she vin-
dicates the position of her kinsman Henry to the Duke
of Hamilton, who is about to marry Beatrix ;—a mixture
which has required a master’s hand to trace. These con-
tradictions are essentially feminine. Perhaps it must be
confessed that in the unreasonableness of the woman, the
author has intended to bear more harshly on the sex than
it deserves. But a true woman will forgive him, because
of the truth of Lady Castlewood’s heart. Her husband had
been killed in a duel, and there were circumstances which
had induced her at the moment to quarrel with Harry and
to be unjust to him. He had been ill, and had gone away
to the wars, and then she had learned the truth, and had
been wretched enough. But when he comes back, and
she sees him, by chance at first, as the anthem is being
sung in the cathedral choir, as she is saying her prayers,
her heart flows over with tenderness to him. “I knew
you would come back,” she said; “and to-day, Henry,
in the anthem when they sang it,—‘ When the Lord
tumed the captivity of Zion we were like them that
dream,’—I thought, yes, like them that dream,—them
that dream. And then it went on, ‘They that sow in
tears shall reap in joy, and he that goeth forth and
weepeth, shall doubtless come home again with rejoicing,
bringing his sheaves with him.’ I looked up from the
book and saw you. I was not surprised when I saw
you. I knew you would come, my dear, and saw the
gold sunshine round your head.” And so it goes on,
running into expressions of heartmelting tenderness.
And yet she herself does not know that her own heart
K 2

132 THACKERAY. [onap.

is seeking his with all a woman’s love. She is still
willing that he should possess Beatrix. “I would call
you my son,” she says, “sooner than the greatest prince
in Europe.” But she warns him of the nature of her
own girl. “’Tis for my poor Beatrix I tremble, whose
headstrong will affrights me, whose jealous temper, and
whose vanity no prayers of mine can cure.” It is but
very gradually that Esmond becomes aware of the truth.
Indeed, he has not become altogether aware of it till the
tale closes. The reader does not see that transfer of
affection from the daughter to the mother which would
fail to reach his sympathy. In the last page of the last
chapter it is told that it is so,—that Esmond marries
Lady Castlewood,—but it is not told till all the incidents
of the story have been completed.

But of the three characters I have named, Beatrix is
the one that has most strongly exercised the writer’s
powers, and will most interest the reader. As far as
outward person is concerned she is very lovely,—so
charming, that every man that comes near to her submits
himself to her attractions and caprices. It is but rarely
that a novelist can succeed in impressing his reader with
a sense of female loveliness. The attempt is made so
frequently,—comes so much as a matter of course in every
novel that is written, and fails so much as a matter of
course, that the reader does not feel the failure. There
are things which we do not expect to have done for us
in literature because they are done so seldom. Novelists
are apt to describe the rural scenes among which their
characters play their parts, but seldom leave any impression
of the places described. Even in poetry how often does this
occur? The words used are pretty, well chosen, perhaps
musical to the ear, and in that way befitting ; but unless

v. | ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 133

the spot has violent characteristics of its own, such as
Burley’s cave or the waterfall of Lodore, no striking
portrait is left. Nor are we disappoimted as we read,
because we have not been taught to expect it to be other-
wise. So it is with those word-painted portraits of women,
which are so frequently given and so seldom convey any
impression. Who has an idea of the outside look of Sophia
Western, or Edith Bellenden, or even of Imogen, though
Iachimo, who described her, was so good at words? A
series of pictures,—illustrations,—-as we have with
Dickens’ novels, and with Thackeray’s, may leave an
impression of a figure,—though even then not often of
feminine beauty. But in this work Thackeray has suc-
ceeded in imbuing us with a sense of the outside loveliness
of Beatrix by the mere force of words, We are not only
told it, but we feel that she was such a one as @ man
cannot fail to covet, even when his judgment goes against
his choice.

Here the judgment goes altogether against the choice.
The girl grows up before us from her early youth till her
twenty-fifth or twenty-sixth year, and becomes,—such as
her mother described her,—-one whose headlong will, whose
jealousy, and whose vanity nothing could restrain. She has
none of those soft foibles, half allied to virtues, by which
weak women fall away into misery or perhaps distraction.
She does not want to love or to be loved. She does not
care to be fondled. She has no longing for caresses.
She wants to be admired,—and to make use of the
admiration she shall achieve for the material purposes
of her life. She wishes to rise in the world; and her
beauty is the sword with which she must open her oyster.
As to her heart, it is a thing of which she becomes aware,
only to assure herself that it must be laid aside and put

134 THACKERAY. [ CHAP,

out of the question. Now and again Esmond touches it.
She just feels that she has a heart to be touched. But
she never has a doubt as to her conduct in that respect.
She will not allow her dreams of ambition to be disturbed
by such folly as love.

In all that there might be something, if not good and
great, nevertheless grand, if her ambition, though worldly,
had in it a touch of nobility. But this poor creature is
made with her bleared blind eyes to fall into the very
lowest depths of feminine ignobility. One lover comes
after another. Harry Esmond is, of course, the lover with
whom the reader interests himself. At last there comes
a duke,—fifty years old, indeed, but with semi-royal
appanages. As his wife she will become a duchess, with
many diamonds, and be her Excellency. The man is stern,
cold, and jealous ; but she does not doubt for a moment.
She is to be Duchess of Hamilton, and towers already in
pride of place above her mother, and her kinsman lover, and
all her belongings. The story here, with its little incidents
of birth, and blood, and ignoble pride, and gratified am-
bition, with a dash of true feminine nobility on the part
of the girl’s mother, is such as to leave one with the im-
pression that it has hardly been beaten in English prose
fiction. ‘Then, in the last moment, the duke is killed in
a duel, and the news is brought to the girl by Esmond.
She turns upon him and rebukes him harshly. Then she
moves away, and feels in a moment that there is nothing
left for her in this world, and that she can only throw
herself upon devotion for consolation. “I am best in my
own room and by myself,” she said. Her eyes were
quite dry, nor did Esmond ever see them otherwise, save
once, in respect of that grief. She gave him a cold hand
as she went out. “Thank you, brother,” she said in a

v.] ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 135

low voice, and with a simplicity more touching than tears,
“all that you have said is true and kind, and I will go
away and will ask pardon.”

But the consolation coming from devotion did not go
far with such a one as her. We cannot rest on religion
merely by saying that we will do so. Very speedily there
comes consolation in another form. Queen Anne is on
her deathbed, and a young Stuart prince appears upon
the scene, of whom some loyal hearts dream that they
can make a king. He is such as Stuarts were, and only
walks across the novelist’s canvas to show his folly and
heartlessness. But there is a moment in which Beatrix
thinks that she may rise in the world to the proud place
of a royal mistress. That is her last ambition! That is
her pride! That is to be her glory! The bleared eyes
can. see no clearer than that. But the mock prince passes
away, and nothing but the disgrace of the wish remains.

Such is the story of Esmond, leaving with it, as does
all Thackeray’s work, a melancholy conviction of the
vanity of all things human. Vanitas vanitatum, as he
wrote on the pages of the French lady’s album, and again
in one of the earlier numbers of Lhe Cornhill Magazine.
With much that is picturesque, much that is droll, much
that is valuable as being a correct picture of the period
selected, the gist of the book is melancholy through-
out. It ends with the promise of happiness to come, but
that is contained merely in a concluding paragraph. The
one woman, during the course of the story, becomes a
widow, with a living love in which she has no hope, with
children for whom her fears are almost stronger than her
affection, who never can rally herself to happiness for a
moment. The other, with all her beauty and all her
brilliance, becomes what we have described,—and marries

136 THACKERAY. [ CIIAP.

at last her brother’s tutor, who becomes a bishop by means
of her intrigues. Esmond, the hero, who is compounded
of all good gifts, after a childhood and youth tinged
throughout with melancholy, vanishes from us, with the
promise that he is to be rewarded by the hand of the
mother of the girl he has loved.

And yet there is not a page in the book over which a
thoughtful reader cannot pause with delight. The nature
in it is true nature. Given a story thus sad, and persons
thus situated, and it is thus that the details would
fellow each other, and thus that the people would con-
duct themselves. It was the tone of Thackeray’s mind
to turn away from the prospect of things joyful, and to see,
-—or believe that he saw,—in all human affairs, the seed
of something base, of something which would be antago-
nistic to true contentment. All his snobs, and all his
fools, and all his knaves, come from the same conviction,
Is it not the doctrine on which our religion is founded,—
though the sadness of it there is alleviated by the doubtful
promise of a heaven ?

Though thrice a thousand years are passed
Since David’s son, the sad and splendid,

The weary king ecclesiast
Upon his awful tablets penned it.

So it was that Thackeray preached his sermon. But
melancholy though it be, the lesson taught in Hsmond
is salutary from beginning to end. The sermon truly
preached is that glory can only come from that which is
truly glorious, and that the results of meanness end
always in the mean. No girl will be taught to wish to
shine like Beatrix, nor will any youth be made to think
that to gain the love of such a one it can be worth his
while to expend his energy or his heart,

Ve4 ESMOND AND THE VIRGINIANS. 137

Esmond was published if 1852. It was not till 1858,
some time after he had returned from his lecturing tours,
that he published the sequel called The Virginians. It was
first brought out in twenty-four monthly numbers, and ran
through the years 1858 and 1859, Messrs. Bradbury and
Evans having been the publishers. It takes up by no means
the story of Esmond, and hardly the characters. The twin
lads, who are called the Virginians, and whose name is
Warrington, are grandsons of Esmond and his wife Lady
Castlewood. Their one daughter, born at the estate in
Virginia, had married a Warrington, and the Virginians
are the issue of that marriage. In the story, one is sent
to England, there to make his way ; and the other is for
awhile supposed to have been killed by the Indians. How
he was not killed, but after awhile comes again forward
in the world of fiction, will be found in the story, which
it is not our purpose to set forth here, The most inte-
resting part of the narrative is that which tells us of the
later fortunes of Madame Beatrix,—the Baroness Bernstein,
—the lady who had in her youth been Beatrix Esmond,
who had then condescended to become Mrs. Tasker, the
tutor’s wife, whence she rose to be the “lady” of a bishop,
and, after the bishop had been put to rest under a load of
marble, had become the baroness,—a rich old woman,
courted by all her relatives because of her wealth.

In The Virginians, as a work of art, is discovered,
more strongly than had shown itself yet in any of his
works, that propensity to wandering which came to
Thackeray because of his idleness. It is, I think, to be
found in every book he ever wrote,—except Esmond ; but
is here more conspicuous than it had been in his earlier
years. Though he can settle himself down to his pen
and ink,—not always even to that without a struggle, but

138 THACKERAY. [ CHAP. V.

to that with sufficient burst of energy to produce a large
average amount of work,—he cannot settle himself down
to the task of contriving a story. There have been those,
—and they have not been bad judges of literature,—who
have told me that they have best liked these vague
narratives. The mind of the man has been clearly
exhibited in them. In them he has spoken out his
thoughts, and given the world to know his convictions, as
well as could have been done in the carrying out any
well-conducted plot. And though the narratives be vague,
the characters are alive. In The Virginians, the two
young men and their mother, and the other ladies with
whom they have to deal, and especially their aunt, the
Baroness Bernstein, are allalive. For desultory reading, for
that picking up of a volume now and again which requires
permission to forget the plot of a novel, this novel is
admirably adapted. There is not a page of it vacant or
dull. But he who takes it up to read as a whole, will
find that it is the work of a desultory writer, to whom it
is not unfrequently difficult to remember the incidents of
his own narrative. “How good it is, even as it is !—but
if he would have done his best for us, what might he
not have done!” This, I think, is what we feel when we
read The Virginians, The author’s mind has in one way
been active enough,—and powerful, as it always is; but
he has been unable to fix it to an intended purpose, and
has gone on from day to day furthering the difficulty he
has intended to master, till the book, under the stress of
circumstances,—demands for copy and the like,—has been
completed before the difficulty has even in truth been
encountered.

CHAPTER VI.
THACKERAY S BURLESQUES.

As so much of Thackeray’s writing partakes of the nature
of burlesque, it would have been unnecessary to devote a
separate chapter to the subject, were it not that there are
among his tales two or three so exceedingly good of their
kind, coming so entirely up to our idea of what a prose
burlesque should be, that were I to omit to mention them
I should pass over a distinctive portion of our author's
work.

Lhe volume called Burlesques, published in 1869, begins
with the Novels by En:inent Hands, and Jeames’s Diary, to
which I have already alluded. It contains also The
Tremendous Adventures of Major Gahagan, A Legend of
the Rhine, and Rebecca and Rowena. Itis of these that
I will now speak. The History of the Next French Revo-
lution and Cow's Diary, with which the volume is con-
cluded, are, according to my thinking, hardly equal to the
others ; nor are they so properly called burlesques.

Nor will I say much of Major Gahagan, though his
adventures are very good fun. He is a warrior,—that Is,
of course,—and ‘he is one in whose wonderful narrative
all that distant India can produce in the way of boasting,
is superadded to Ireland’s best efforts in the same line.
Baron Munchausen was nothing to him; and to the bare

140 THACKERAY. [orap.

and simple miracles of the baron is joined that humour
without which Thackeray never tells any story. This is
broad enough, no doubt, but is still humour ;—as when the
major tells us that he always kept in his own apartment
a small store of gunpowder; “always keeping it under
my bed, with a candle burning for fear of accidents.”
Or when he describes his courage; “I was running,—
running as the brave stag before the hounds,—running,
as I have done a great number of times in my life,
when there was no help for it but a run.” Then he
tells us of his digestion. ‘‘ Once in Spain I ate the leg of
a horse, and was so eager to swallow this morsel, that I
bolted the shoe as well as the hoof, and never felt the
slishtest inconvenience from either.” He storms a citadel,
and has only a snuff box given him for his reward. “ Never
mind,” says Major Gahagan ; ‘when they want me to
storm a fort again, I shall know better.” By which we
perceive that the major remembered his Horace, and had
in his mind the soldier who had lost his purse. But the
major’s adventures, excellent as they are, lack the continued
interest which is attached to the two following stories.

Of what nature is The Legend of the Rhine, we learn
from the commencement. “It was in the good old days
of chivalry, when every mountain that bathes its shadow
in the Rhine had its castle; not inhabited as now by a
few rats and owls, nor covered with moss and wallflowers
and funguses and creeping ivy. No, no; where the ivy
now clusters there grew strong portcullis and bars of
steel ; where the wallflowers now quiver in the ramparts
there were silken banners embroidered with wonderful
heraldry ; men-at-arms marched where now you shall only
see a bank of moss or a hideous black champignon ; and
in place of the rats and owlets, I warrant me there were

VI. | THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 141

ladies and knights to revel in the great halls, and to feast
and dance, and to make love there.” So that we know
well beforehand of what kind will this story be. It will
be pure romance,—burlesqued. “Ho seneschal, fill me
a cup of hot liquor; put sugar in it, good fellow; yea,
and a little hot water,—but very little, for my soul is sad
as [ think of those days and knights of old.”

A knight is riding alone on his war-horse, with all his
armour with him,—and his luggage. His rank is shown by
the name on his portmanteau, and his former address and
present destination by a card which was attached. It
had run, “Count Ludwig de Hombourg, Jerusalem, but
the name of the Holy City had been dashed out with the
pen, and that of Godesberg substituted.” “By St. Hugo
of Katzenellenbogen,” said the good knight shivering,
“tis colder here than at Damascus. Shall I be at
Godesberg in time for dinner?” He has come to see his
friend Count Karl, Margrave of Godesberg.

But at Godesberg everything is in distress and sorrow.
There is a new inmate there, one Sir Gottfried, since whose
arrival the knight of the castle has become a wretched
man, having been taught to believe all evils of his wife,
and of his child Otto, and a certain stranger, one Hilde-
brandt. Gottfried, we see with half an eye, has done it
all. It is in vain that Ludwig de Hombourg tells his
old friend Karl that this Gottfried is a thoroughly bad
fellow, that he had been found to be a cardsharper in the
Holy Land, and had been drummed out of his regiment.
“Twas but some silly quarrel over the wine-cup,” says
Karl. “Hugo de Brodenel would have no black bottle
on the board.” We think we can remember the quarrel
‘of “ Brodenel” and the black bottle, though so many
things have taken place since that.

142 THACKERAY. [onap.

There is a festival in the castle, and Hildebrandt comes
with the other guests. Then Ludwig’s attention is called
by poor Karl, the father, to a certain family likeness.
Can it be that he is not the father of his own child? He
is playing cards with his friend Ludwig when that traitor
Gottfried comes and whispers to him, and makes an ap-
pointment, ‘J will be there too,” thought Count Ludwig,
the good Knight of Hombourg.

On the next morning, before the stranger knight had
shaken off his slumbers, all had been found out and
everything done. ‘The lady has been sent to a convent
and her son to a monastery. The knight of the castle
has -no comfort but in his friend Gottfried, a distant
cousin who is to inherit everything. All this is told to Sir
Ludwig,—who immediately takes steps to repair the mis-
chief. “A cup of coffee straight,” says he to the servitors,
“Bid the cook pack me a sausage and bread in paper, and
the groom saddle Streithengst. We have far to ride.”
So this redresser of wrongs starts off, leaving the Margrave
in his grief,

Then there is a great fight between Sir Ludwig and
Sir Gottfried, admirably told in the manner of the later
chroniclers,—a hermit sitting by and describing everything
almost as well as Rebecca did on the tower. Sir Ludwig
being in the right, of course gains the day. But the
escape of the fallen knight’s horse is the cream of this
chapter. “Away, ay, away /-away amid the green vine-
yards and golden cornfields ; away up the steep mountains,
where he frightened the eagles in their eyries ; away down
the clattering ravines, where the flashing cataracts tumble ;
away through the dark pine-forests, where the hungry
wolves are howling; away over the dreary wolds, where
the wild wind walks alone; away through the splashing

VI. | THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 143

quagmires, where the will-o’-the wisp slunk frightened
among the reeds ; away through light and darkness, storm
and sunshine; away by tower and town, highroad and
hamlet... . Brave horse! gallant steed! snorting child
of Araby! On went the horse, over mountains, rivers,
turnpikes, applewomen; and never stopped until he
reached a livery-stable in Cologne, where his master was
accustomed to put him up!”

The conquered knight, Sir Gottfried, of course reveals
the truth. This Hildebrandt is no more than the lady’s
brother,— as it happened a brother in disguise,— and
hence the likeness. Wicked knights when they die
always divulge their wicked secrets, and this knight
Gottfried does so now. Sir Ludwig carries the news
home to the afflicted husband and father; who of course
instantly sends off messengers for his wife and son. The
wife won't come. All she wants is to have her dresses
and jewels sent to her. Of so cruel a husband she has
had enough. As for the son, he has jumped out of a boat
on the Rhine, as he was being carried to his monastery,
and was drowned !

But he was not drowned, but had only dived. “The
gallant boy swam on beneath the water, never lifting his
head for a single moment between Godesberg and Cologne ;
the distance being twenty-five or thirty miles,”

Then he becomes an archer, dressed in green from head
to foot. How it was is all told in the story ; and he goes to
shoot for a prize at the Castle of Adolf the Duke of Cleeves,
On his way be shoots a raven marvellously,—almost as
marvellously as did Robin Hood the twig in Ivanhoe. Then
one of his companions is married, or nearly married, to
the mysterious “Lady of Windeck,”—would have been
married but for Otto, and that the bishop and dean, who

144 THACKERAY. [ CHAP.

were dragged up from their long-ago graves to perform
the ghostly ceremony, were prevented by the ill-timed
mirth of a certain old canon of the church named
Schidnischmidt. The reader has to read the name out
loud before he recognises an old friend. But this of the
Lady of Windeck is an episode.

How at the shooting-match, which of course ensued,
Otto shot for and won the heart of a fair lady, the duke’s
daughter, need not be told here, nor how he quarrelled
with the Rowski of Donnerblitz,—the hideous and sulky,
but rich and powerful, nobleman who had come to take
the hand, whether he could win the heart or not, of the
daughter of the duke. It is all arranged according to the
proper and romantic order. Otto, though he enlists in
the duke’s archer-guard as simple soldier, contrives to
fight with the Rowski de Donnerblitz, Margrave of Eulen-
schrenkenstein, and of course kills him. “‘ Yield, yield,
Sir Rowski !’ shouted he in a calm voice. A blow dealt
madly at his head was the reply. It was the last blow
that the count of Eulenschrenkenstein ever struck in
battle. The curse was on his lips as the crashing steel
descended into his brain and split it in two. He rolled
like a dog from his horse, his enemy’s knee was in a
moment on his chest, and the dagger of mercy at his
throat, ac the knight once more called upon him to yield.”
The knight was of course the archer who had come for-
ward as an unknown champion, and had touched the
Rowski’s shield with the point of his lance. For this
story, as well as the rest, is a burlesque on our dear old
favourite Ivanhoe.

That everything goes right at last, that the wife comes
back from her monastery, and joins her jealous husband,
and that the duke’s daughter has always, in truth, known

VIL] THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 145

that the poor archer was a noble knight,—these things
are all matters of course.

But the best of the three burlesques is Rebecea and
Rowena, or A Romance upon Romance, which I need not
tell my readers is a continuation of Ivanhoe. Of this bur-
lesque it is the peculiar characteristic that, while it has been
written to ridicule the persons and the incidents of that
perhaps the most favourite novel in the English language,
it has been so written that it would not have offended the
author had he lived to read it, nor does it disgust or annoy
those who most love the original. There is not a word in
it having an intention to belittle Scott. It has sprung
from the genuine humour created in Thackeray’s mind by
his aspect of the romantic. We remember how reticent,
how dignified was Rowena,—how cold we perhaps thought
her, whether there was so little of that billing and cooing,
that kissing and squeezing, between her and Ivanhoe which
we used to think necessary to lovers’ blisses. And thera
was left too on our minds, an idea that Ivanhoe had liked
the Jewess almost as well as Rowena, and that Rowena
might possibly have become jealous. ‘Thackeray’s mind
at once went to work and pictured to him a Rowena such
as such a woman might become after marriage; and as
Ivanhoe was of a melancholy nature and apt to be hipped;
and grave, and silent, as a matter of course Thackeray
presumes him to have been henpecked after his marriage.

Our dear Wamba disturbs his mistress in some de-
votional conversation with her chaplain, and the stern
lady orders that the fool shall have three-dozen lashes.
“TI got you out of Front de Beeuf’s castle,” said poor
Wamba, piteously, appealing to Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe,
‘and canst thou not save me from the lash?”

‘Yes; from Front de Beeutf’s castle, when you were

iL

TAG THACKERAY. [cHaP

locked up with the Jewess in the tower!” said Rowena,
haughtily replying to the timid appeal of her husband.
“Gurth, give him four-dozen,”—and this was all poor
Wamba got by applying for the mediation of his master.
Then the satirist moralises ; “ Did you ever know a right-
minded woman pardon another for being handsomer and
more love-worthy than herself?” Rowena is “ always
flinging Rebecca into Ivanhoe’s teeth;” and altogether
life at Rotherwood, as described by the later chronicles,
is not very happy even when most domestic. Ivanhoe
becomes sad and moody. He takes to drinking, and his
lady does not forget to tell him of it. “Ah dear axe !”
he exclaims, apostrophising his weapon, “‘ah gentle steel !
that was a merry time when I sent thee crashing into the
pate of the Emir Abdul Melek!” There was nothing
left to him but his memories; and “in a word, his life
was intolerable.” So he determines that he will go and
look after king Richard, who of course was wandering
abroad. He anticipates a little difficulty with his wife ;
but she is only too happy to let him go, comforting her-
self with the idea that Athelstane will look after her. So
her husband starts on his journey. “Then Ivanhoe’s
trumpet blew. Then Rowena waved her pocket-hand-
kerchief. Then the household gave a shout. Then the
pursuivant of the good knight, Sir Wilfrid the Crusader,
flung out his banner,—which was argent, a gules cramoisy
with three Moors impaled,—then Wamba gave a lash on
bis mule’s haunch, and Ivanhoe, heaving a great sigh,
turned the tail of his war-horse upon the castle of his
fathers,”

Ivanhoe finds Coeur de Leon besieging the Castle of
Chalons, and there they both do wondrous deeds,
Ivanhoe always surpassing the king. The jealousy of

vI.] THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 147

the courtiers, the ingratitude of the king, and the melan-
choly of the knight, who is never comforted except when
he has slaughtered some hundreds, are delightful. Roger
de Backbite and Peter de Toadhole are intended to be
quite real. Then his majesty sings, passing off as his
own, a song of Charles Lever’s. Sir Wilfrid declares the
truth, and twits the king with his falsehood, whereupon
he has the guitar thrown at his head for his pains. He
catches the guitar, however, gracefully in his left hand,
and sings his own immortal ballad of King Canute,—
than which Thackeray never did anything better.

“‘ Might I stay the sun above us, good Sir Bishop?” Canute
cried ;
** Could I bid the silver moon to pause upon her heavenly ride ?
If the moon obeys my orders, sure I can command the tide.

Will the advancing waves obey me, Bishop, if I make the
sign P”

Said the bishop, bowing lowly; “ Land and sea, my lord, are
thine.”

Canute turned towards the ocean; “ Back,” he said, “thou
foaming brine.”

But the sullen ocean answered with a louder deeper roar,
And the rapid waves drew nearer, falling, sounding on the
shore ;

Back the keeper and the bishop, back the king and courtiers
bore.

We must go to the book to look at the picture of the
king as he is killing the youngest of the sons of the
Count of Chalons. Those illustrations of Doyle’s are
admirable. The size of the king’s head, and the size of
his battle-axe as contrasted with the size of the child, are
burlesque all over. But the king has been wounded by a
bolt from the bow of Sir Bertrand de Gourdon while he

L 2

148 THACKERAY. (CHAP.

is slaughtering the infant, and there is an end of him.
Ivanhoe, too, is killed at the siege,—Sir Roger de
Backbite having stabbed him in the back during the
scene. Had he not been then killed, his widow Rowena
could not have married Athelstane, which she soon did
after hearing the sad news; nor could he have had that
celebrated epitaph in Latin and English ;

Hie est Guilfridus, belli dum vixit avidus.

Cum giladeo et lancea Normannia et quoque Francia
Verbera dura dabat. Per Turcos multum equitabat.
Guilbertum occidit ;—atque Hyerosolyma vidit.
Heu! nunc sub fossa sunt tanti militis ossa.

Uxor Athelstani est conjux castissima Thani.*

The translation we are told was by Wamba;

Under the stone you behold, Brian, the Templar untrue,
Buried and coffined and cold, Fairly in tourney he slew;
Lieth Sir Wilfrid the Bold. Saw Hierusalem too.

Always he marched in advance, Now he is buried and gone,
Warring in Flanders and France, Lying beneath the gray stone.
Doughty with sword and with Where shall you find such a

lance. one P
Famous in Saracen fight, Long time his widow deplored,
Rode in his youth, the Good Weeping, the fate of her lord,
Knight, Sadly cut off by the sword.

Scattering Paynims in flight.

When she was eased of her pain,
Came the good lord Athelstane,
When her ladyship married again.

>I doubt that Thackeray did not write the Latin epitaph, but I
hardly dare suggest the name of any author. The “vixit avidus”
is quite worthy of Thackeray; but had he tried his hand at such
mode of expression he would have done more of it. I should
like to know whether he had been in company with Father Prout
at the time.

vr] THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 149

The next chapter begins naturally as follows ; “I trust
nobody will suppose, from the events described in the
last chapter, that our friend Ivanhoe is really dead.”
He is of course cured of his wounds, though they take
six years in the curing. And then he makes his way
back to Rotherwood, in a friar’s disguise, much as he did
on that former occasion when we first met him, and there
is received by Athelstane and Rowena,—and their boy ! —
while Wamba sings him a song:

Then you know the worth of a lass,
Once you have come to forty year!

No one, of course, but Wamba knows Ivanhoe, who
roams about the country, melancholy,—as he of course
would be,—charitable,—as he perhaps might be,—for we
are specially told that he had a large fortune and nothing to
do with it, and slaying robbers wherever he met them ;—
but sad at heart all the time. Then. there comes a little
burst of the author’s own feelings, while he is burlesquing.
“Ah my dear friends and British public, are there not
others who are melancholy under a mask of gaiety, and
who in the midst of crowds are lonely? Liston was a most
melanchcly man ; Grimaldi had feelings ; and then others
I wot of. But psha!—let us have the next chapter.”
In all of which there was a touch of earnestness.

Ivanhoe’s griefs were enhanced by the wickedness of
king John, under whom he would not serve. ‘It was
Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe, I need scarcely say, who got the
Barons of England to league together and extort from the
king that famous instrument and palladium of our
liberties, at present in the British Museum, Great Russell
Street, Bloomsbury,—The Magna Charta.” Athelstane
also quarrels with the king, whose orders he disobeys, ana
Rotherwood is attacked by the royal army. No one was

150 THACKERAY. [ CHAP.

of real service in the way of fighting except Ivanhoe,—
and how could he take up that cause? ‘No; be hanged
to me,” said the knight bitterly. “This is a quarrel in
which I can’t interfere. Common politeness forbids. Let
yonder ale-swilling Athelstane defend his,—ha, ha !—wife ;
and my Lady Rowena guard her,—ha, ha !—son /” and he
laughed wildly and madly.

But Athelstane is killed,—this time in earnest,—and
then Ivanhoe rushes to the rescue. He finds Gurth dead
at the park-lodge, and though he is all alone,—having
outridden his followers,—he rushes up the chestnut
avenue to the house, which is being attacked. “An
Ivanhoe ! an Ivanhoe !” he bellowed out with a shout that
overcame all the din of battle;—‘* Notre Dame & la
recousse ?” and to hurl his lance through the midriff of
Reginald de Bracy, who was commanding the assault,—
who fell howling with anguish,—to wave his battle-axe
over his own head, and to cut off those of thirteen men-
at-arms, was the work of an instant. ‘An Ivanhoe! an
Jvanhoe !” he still shouted, and down went a man as sure
as he said “ hoe!”

Nevertheless he is again killed by multitudes, or very
nearly,—and has again to be cured by the tender nursing
of Wamba. But Athelstane is really dead, and Rowena
and the boy have to be found. He does his duty and
finds them,—just in time to be present at Rowena’s death.
She has been put in prison by king John, and is in
extremis when her first husband gets to her. “ Wilfrid,
my early loved,”* slowly gasped she removing her gray

* There is something almost illnatured in his treatment of
Rowena, who is very false in her declarations of love ;—and it is
to be feared that by Rowena, the autho intends the normal
married lady of English society.

vis} THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 151

hair from her furrowed temples, and gazing on her boy
fondly as he nestled on Ivanhoe’s knee,—“ promise me by
St. Waltheof of Templestowe,—promise me one boon !”

“I do,” said Ivanhoe, clasping the boy, and thinking
that it was to that little innocent that the promise was
intended to apply.

“ By St. Waltheof ?”

“By St. Waltheof !”

“ Promise me then,” gasped Rowena, staring wildly at
him, “ that you will never marry a Jewess !”

“By St. Waltheof!” cried Ivanhoe, “but this is too
much,” and he did not make the promise.

“Having placed young Cedric at school at the Hall of
Dotheboys, in Yorkshire, and arranged his family affairs,
Sir Wilfrid of Ivanhoe quitted a country which had no
longer any charm for him, as there was no fighting to be
done, and in which his stay was rendered less agreeable
by the notion that king John would hang him.” So he
goes forth and fights again, in league with the Knights of
St. John,—the Templars naturally having a dislike to him
because of Brian de Bois Guilbert. ‘The only fault that
the great and gallant, though severe and ascetic Folko of
Heydenbraten, the chief of the Order of St. John, found
with the melancholy warrior whose lance did such service
to the cause, was that he did not persecute the Jews as
so religious a knight should. So the Jews, in cursing the
Christians, always excepted the name of the Desdichado,
—or the double disinherited, as he now was,—the Des-
dichado Doblado.” Then came the battle of Alarcos, and
the Moors were all but in possession of the whole of Spain.
Sir Wilfrid, like other good Christians, cannot endure
this, so he takes ship in Bohemia, where he happens to
be quartered, and has himself. carried to Barcelona, and

152 THACKERAY. {owar.

proceeds “ to slaughter the Moors forthwith.” Then there
is a scene in which Isaac of York comes on as a messenger,
to ransom from a Spanish knight, Don Beltram de Cuchilla
y Trabuco, y Espada, y Espelon, a little Moorish girl.
The Spanish knight of course murders the little girl instead
of taking the ransom. Two hundred thousand dirhems are
offered, however much that may be; but the knight, who
happens to be in funds at the time, prefers to kill the
little girl. All this is only necessary to the story as intro-
ducing Isaac of York. Sir Wilfrid is of course intent upon
finding Rebecca. Through all his troubles and triumphs,
from his gaining and his losing of Rowena, from the
day on which he had been “locked up with the Jewess in
the tower,” he had always been true to her. “Away
from me !” said the old Jew, tottering. ‘Away, Rebecca
is,—dead !” Then Ivanhoe goes out and kills fifty
thousand Moors, and there is the picture of him,—killing
them.

But Rebecca is not dead at all. Her father had said so
because Rebecca had behaved very badly to him, She
had refused to marry the Moorish prince, or any of her
own. people, the Jews, and had gone as far as to declare
her passion for Ivanhoe and her resolution to be a
Christian. All the Jews and Jewesses in Valencia
turned against her,—so that she was locked up in the
back-kitchen and almost starved to death. But Ivanhoe
found her of course, and makes her Mrs. Ivanhoe, or
Lady Wilfrid the second. Then Thackeray tells us how
for many years he, Thackeray, had not ceased to feel that
it ought to be so. ‘“‘ Indeed I have thought of it any time
these five-and-twenty years,—ever since, as a boy at school,
I commenced the noble study of novels,—ever since the
day when, lying on sunny slopes, of half-holidays, the fair

Vi.j THACKERAY’S BURLESQUES. 153

chivalrous figures and beautiful shapes of knights and
ladies were visible to me, ever since I grew to love
Rebecca, that sweetest creature of the poet’s fancy, and
longed to see her righted.”

And so, no doubt, it had been. The very burlesque
had grown from the way in which his young imagination
had been moved by Scott’s romance. He had felt from
the time of those happy half-holidays in which he had
been lucky enough to get hold of the novel, that according
to all laws of poetic justice, Rebecca, as being the more
beautiful and the more interesting of the heroines, was
entitled to the possession of the hero. We have all of
us felt the same. But to him had been present at the
same time all that is ludicrous in our ideas of middle-age
chivalry ; the absurdity of its recorded deeds, the blood-
thirstiness of its recreations, the selfishness of its men,
the falseness of its honour, the cringing of its loyalty,
the tyranny of its princes. And so there came forth
Rebecca and Rowena, all broad fun from beginning to
end, but never without a purpose,—the best burlesque, as
{ think, in our language.

CHAPTER VII.
THACKERAY 'S LECTURES.

Tw speaking of Thackeray’s life I have said why and how,
it was that he took upon himself to lecture, and have.
also told the reader that he was altogether successful in
carrying out the views proposed to himself. Of his
peculiar manner of lecturing I have said but little, never
having heard him. ‘He pounded along,—very clearly,”
I have been told; from which I surmise that there was
no special grace of eloquence, but that he was always
audible. I cannot imagine that he should have been
ever eloquent. He could not have taken the: trouble.
necessary with his voice, with his cadences, or with his
outward appearance. I imagine that they who seem so
naturally to fall into the proprieties of elocution have
generally taken a great deal of trouble beyond that which
the mere finding of their words has cost them. It is
clearly to the matter of what he then gave the world, and
not to the manner, that we must look for what interest is
to be found in the lectures.

Those on The English Humorists were given first.
The second set was on The Four Georges. In the volume
now before us The Georges are printed first, and the
whole is produced simply as a part of Thackeray’s literary
work, Looked at, however, in that light the merit of the

CHAD. VII] THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 155

two sets of biographical essays is very different. In the one
we have all the anecdotes which could be brought together
respecting four of our kings,—who as men were not
peculiar, though their reigns were, and will always be,
famous, because the country during the period was in-
creasing greatly in prosperity and was ever strengthening
the hold it had upon its liberties. In the other set the
lecturer was a man of letters dealing with men of letters,
and himself a prince among humorists is dealing with the
humorists of his own country and language. One could
not imagine a better subject for such discourses from
Thackeray’s mouth than the latter. The former was not,
I think, so good.

In discussing the lives of kings the biographer may
trust to personal details or to historical facts. He may
take the man, and say what good or evil may be said of
him as a man ;—or he may take the period, and tell his
readers what happened to the country while this or the
other king was on the throne. In the case with which
we are dealing, the lecturer had not time enough or
room enough for real history. His object was to let
his audience know of what nature were the men; and we
are bound to say that the pictures have not on the whole
been flattering. It was almost necessary that with such a
subject such should be the result. A story of family
virtues, with princes and princesses well brought up,
with happy family relations, all couleur de rose,—as it
would of course become us to write if we were dealing
with the life of a living sovereign,—would not be inte-
resting. No one on going to hear Thackeray lecture on
the Georges expected that. There must be some piquancy
given, or the lecture would be dull ;—and the eulogy of
personal virtues can seldom be piquant. It is difficult to

156 THACKERAY. [oar.

speak fittingly of a sovereign, either living or not long
since gone, You can hardly praise such a one without
flattery. You can hardly censure him without injustice.
We are either ignorant of his personal doings or we
know them as secrets, which have been divulged for the
most part either falsely or treacherously,—often both
falsely and treacherously. It is better, perhaps, that we
should not deal with the personalities of princes.

I believe that Thackeray fancied that he had spoken
well of George IIL, and am sure that it was his intention
to do so. But the impression he leaves is poor. “ He is
said not to have cared for Shakespeare or tragedy much ;
farces and pantomimes were his joy ;—and especially when
clown swallowed a carrot or a string of sausages, he would
laugh so outrageously that the lovely princess by his side
would have to say, ‘My gracious monarch, do compose
yourself’ ‘George, be a king!’ were the words which
she,”—his mother,—“ was ever croaking in the ears of her
son; and a king the simple, stubborn, affectionate, bigoted
man tried to be.” “He did his best ; he worked according
to his lights; what virtues he knew he tried to practise ;
what knowledge he could master he strove to acquire.”
If the lectures were to be popular, it was absolutely
necessary that they should be written in this strain, A
lecture simply laudatory on the life of St. Paul would not
draw even the bench of bishops to listen to it; but were .
a flaw found in the apostle’s life, the whole Church of
England would be bound to know all about it. I am
quite sure that Thackeray believed every word that he
said in the lectures, and that he intended to put in the
good and the bad, honestly, as they might come to his
hand. We may be quite sure that he did not intend to
flatter the royal family ;—equally sure that he would not

Vit. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 157

calumniate. There were, however, so many difficulties to
be encountered that I cannot but think that the subject
was ill-chosen. In making them so amusing as he did
and so little offensive great ingenuity was shown.

I will now go back to the first series, in which the
lecturer treated of Swift, Congreve, Addison, Steele, Prior,
Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, Fielding, Sterne, and
Goldsmith. All these Thackeray has put in their proper
order, placing the men from the date of their birth, except
Prior, who was in truth the eldest of the lot, but whom
it was necessary to depose, in order that the great Swift
might stand first on the list, and Smollett, who was not
born till fourteen years after Fielding, eight years after
Sterne, and who has been moved up, I presume, simply
from caprice. From the birth of the first to the death of
the last, was a period of nearly a hundred years, They
were never absolutely all alive together ; but it was nearly
so, Addison and Prior having died before Smollett was born.
Whether we should accept as humorists the full cata-
logue, may be a question ; though we shall hardly wish to
eliminate any one from such a dozen of names. Pope we
should hardly define as a humorist, were we to be seek-
ing for a definition specially fit for him, though we shall
certainly not deny the gift of humour to the author of The
Rape of the Lock, or to the translator of any portion of
The Odyssey. Nor should we have included Fielding or
Smollett, in spite of Parson Adams and Tabitha Bramble,
unless anxious to fill a good company. That Hogarth
was specially a humorist no one will deny; but in speak-
ing of humorists we should have presumed, unless other-
wise notified, that humorists in letters only had been
intended. As Thackeray explains clearly what he means
by a humorist, I may as well here repeat the passage,

158 THACKERAY. [onap,

‘Tf humour only meant laughter, you would scarcely feel
more interest about humorous writers than about the
private life of poor Harlequin just mentioned, who pos-
sesses in common with these the power of making you
laugh. But the men regarding whose lives and stories
your kind presence here shows that you have curiosity and
sympathy, appeal to a great number of our other faculties,
besides our mere sense of ridicule. The humorous writer
professes to awaken and direct your love, your pity, your
kindness,—your scorn for untruth, pretension, imposture,
—your tenderness for the weak, the poor, the oppressed,
the unhappy. To the best of his means and ability ho
comments on all the ordinary actions and passions of
life almost. He takes upon himself to be the week-day
preacher, so to speak. Accordingly, as he finds, and
speaks, and feels the truth best, we regard him, esteem
him,—sometimes love him. And as his business is to
marx other people’s lives and peculiarities, we moralise
upon his life when he is gone,—and yesterday’s preacher
becomes the text for to-day’s sermon.”

Having thus explained his purpose, Thackeray begins
his task, and puts Swift in his front rank as a humorist.
The picture given of this great man has very manifestly
the look of truth, and if true, is terrible indeed. “We do,
in fact, know it to be true,—even though it be admitted
that there is still room left for a book to be written on
the life of the fearful dean. Here was a man endued with
an intellect pellucid as well as brilliant; who could not
only conceive but see also,—with some fine instincts too;
whom fortune did not flout; whom circumstances fairly
served ; but who, from first to last, was miserable himself,
who made others miserable, and who deserved misery. Our
business, during the page or two which we can give to the

_ vir. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 159

subject, is not with Swift but with Thackeray’s picture of
Swift. It is painted with colours terribly strong and with
shadows fearfully deep. “Would you like to have lived
with him?” Thackeray asks. Then he says how pleasant
it would have been to have passed some time with Field-
ing, Johnson, or Goldsmith. “TI should like to have been
Shakespeare’s shoeblack,” he says. “But Swift! If you
had been his inferior in parts,—and that, with a great
respect for all persons present, I fear is only very likely,—
his equal in mere social station, he would have bullied,
scorned, and insulted you. If, undeterred by his great
reputation, you had met him like a man, he would have
quailed before you and not had the pluck to reply,—and
gone home, and years after written a foul epigram upon
you.” Thereisa picture! “Ifyou had been a lord with
a blue riband, who flattered his vanity, or could help his
ambition, he would have been the most delightful com-
pany in the world. .... How he would have torn your
enemies to pieces for you, and made fun of the Opposition !
His servility was so boisterous that it looked like inde-
pendence.” He was a man whose mind was never fixed
on high things, but was striving always after something
which, little as 16 might be, and successful as he was,
should always be out of his reach. It had been his mis-
fortune to become a clergyman, because the way to church
preferment seemed to be the readiest. He became, as we all
know, a dean,—but never a bishop, and was therefore
wretched. Thackeray describes him asa clerical highway-
man, seizing on all he could get. But “the great prize has
not yet come. The coach with the mitre and crozier in
it, which he intends to have for his share, has been delayed
on the way from St. James’s; and he waits and waits till
nightfall, when his runners come and tell bim that the

160 THACKERAY. [oHar,

coach has taken a different way and escaped him. So he
fires his pistol into the air with a curse, and rides away
into his own country ;”—or, in other words, takes a poor
deanery in Ireland.

Thackeray explains very correctly, as I think, the
nature of the weapons which the man used,—namely,
the words and style with which he wrote. “That Swift
was born at No. 7, Hoey’s Court, Dublin, on November 30,
1667, is a certain fact, of which nobody will deny the
sister-island the honour and glory; but it seems to me he
was no more an Irishman than a man born of English
parents at Calcutta is a Hindoo. Goldsmith was an
Irishman and always an Irishman ; Steele was an Irishman
-and always an Irishman; Swift’s heart was English and
in England, his habits English, his logic eminently
English ; his statement is elaborately simple; he shuns
tropes and metaphors, and uses his ideas and words with
a wise thrift and economy, as he used his money ;-——with
which he could be generous and splendid upon great
occasions, but which he husbanded when there was no
need to spend it. He never indulges in needless extrava-
gance of rhetoric, lavish epithets, profuse imagery.
He lays his opinions before you with a grave simplicity
and a perfect neatness.” This is quite true of him, and
the result is that though you may deny him sincerity,
simplicity, humanity, or good taste, you can hardly find
fault with his language.

Swift was a clergyman, and this is what Thackeray
says of him in regard to his sacred profession. “I know
of few things more conclusive as to the sincerity of
Swift’s religion, than his advice to poor John Gay to
turn clergyman, and look out for a seat on the Bench!
Gay, the author of The Beggar's Opera; Gay, the

VII. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 161

wildest of the wits about town! It was this man that
Jonathan Swift advised to take orders, to mount in a
cassock and bands,—just as he advised him to husband
his shillings, and put his thousand pounds out to
interest,”

It was not that he was without religion,—or without,
rather, his religious beliefs and doubts, “‘for Switt,”
says Thackeray, “was a reverent, was a pious spirit.
For Swift could love and could pray.” Left to
himself and to the natural thoughts of his mind, with-
out those “orders” to which he had bound himself as
a necessary part of his trade, he could have turned
to his God with questionings which need not then have
been heartbreaking. ‘It is my belief,” says Thackeray,
“that he suffered frightfully from the consciousness of
his own scepticism, and that he had bent his pride so
far down as to put his apostasy out to hire.” I doubt
whether any of Swift’s works are very much read now,
but perhaps Gulliver’s travels are oftener in the hands of
modern readers than any other. Of all the satires in our
language it is probably the most cynical, the most abso-
lutely illnatured, and therefore the falsest. Let those
who care to form an opinion of Swift’s mind from the
best known of his works, turn to Thackeray’s account
of Gulliver. J can imagine no greater proof of misery
than to have been able to write such a book as that.

It is thus that the lecturer concludes his lecture about
Swift. “ He shrank away from all affections sooner or
later. Stella and Vanessa both died near him, and away
from him. He had not heart enough to see them die..
He broke from his fastest friend, Sheridan. He slunk
away from his fondest admirer, Pope. His laugh jars on
one’s ear after seven-score years. He was always alone,---~

M

162 THACKERAY. [onar.

alone and gnashing in the darkness, except when Stella’s
sweet smile came and shone on him. When that went,
silence and utter night closed over him. An immense
genius, an awful downfall and ruin! So great a man he
seems to me, that thinking of him is like thinking of an
empire falling. We have other great names to mention,—
none I think, however, so great or so gloomy.” And so
we pass on from Swift, feeling that though the man was
eertainly a humorist, we have had as yet but little to do
with humour.

Congreve is the next who, however truly he may have
been a humorist, is described here rather as a man of
fashion. A man of fashion he certainly was, but is best
known in our literature as a comedian,—worshipping that
comic Muse to whom Thackeray hesitates to introduce his
audience, because she is not only merry but shameless
also. Congreve’s muse was about as bad as any muse
that ever misbehaved herself,—and I think, as litile
amusing. “‘ Reading in these plays now,” says Thackeray,
“is like shutting your ears and looking at people dancing.
What does it mean?+—the measures, the grimaces, the
bowing, shuffling, and retreating, the cavaliers seuls ad-
vancing upon their ladies, then ladies and men twirling
round at the end in a mad galop, after which everybody
bows and the quaint rite is celebrated?” It is always
so with Congreve’s plays, and Etherege’s and Wycherley’s.
The world we meet there is not our world, and as we read
the plays we have no sympathy with these unknown
people. It was not that they lived so long ago. They
are much nearer to us in time than the men and women
who figured on the stage in the reign of James I. But
their nature is farther from our nature. They sparkle
but never warm. They are witty but leave no impres-

VI. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 163

sion. I might almost go further, and say that they are
wicked but never allure. “When Voltaire came to visit
the Great Congreve,” says Thackeray, “the latter rather
affected to despise his literary reputation ; and in this,
perhaps, the great Congreve was not far wrong, A touch
of Steele’s tenderness is worth all his finery ; a flash of
Swift's lightning, a beam of Addison’s pure sunshine,
and his tawdry playhouse taper is invisible. But the
ladies loved him, and he was undoubtedly a pretty
fellow.”

There is no doubt as to the true humour of Addison,
who next comes up before us, but I think that he makes
hardly so good a subject for a lecturer as the great gloomy.
man of intellect, or the frivolous man of pleasure.
Thackeray tells us all that is to be said about him asa
humorist in so few lines that I may almost insert them
on this page: “But it is not for his reputation as the
great author of Cato and The Campaign, or for his merits
as Secretary of State, or for his rank and high distinction
as Lady Warwick’s husband, or for his eminence as an
examiner of political questions on the Whig side, or a
guardian of British liberties, that we admire Joseph
Addison. It is as a Tattler of small talk and a Spectator
of mankind that we cherish and love him, and owe as
much pleasure to him as to any human being that ever
wrote. He came in that artificial age, and began to speak
with his noble natural voice. He came the gentle satirist,
who hit no unfair blow; the kind judge, who castigated
only in smiling. While Swift went about hanging and
ruthless, a literary Jeffreys, in Addison’s kind court only
minor cases were tried ;—only peccadilloes and small sins
against society, only a dangerous libertinism in tuckers
and hoops, or a nuisance in the abuse of beaux canes and

m2

164, THACKERAY. [oiar.

enuffboxes.” Steele set The Tatler a going. “ But with
his friend’s discovery of Zhe Tatler, Addison’s calling
was found, and the most delightful Tattler in the world
began to speak. He does not go very deep. Let gentle-
men of a profound genius, critics accustomed to the
plunge of the bathos, console themselves by thinking
that he couldn’t go very deep. There is no trace of
suffering in his writing. He was so good, so honest, so
healthy, so cheerfully selfish,—if I must use the word !”

Such was Addison as a humorist; and when the
hearer shall have heard also,—or the reader read,—that
this most charming Tattler also wrote Cato, became a
Secretary of State, and married a countess, he will have
learned all that Thackeray had to tell of him.

Steele was one who stood much less high in the
world’s esteem, and who left behind him a much smaller
name,—but was quite Addison’s equal as a humorist and
a wit. Addison, though he had the reputation of a
toper, was respectability itself. Steele was almost always
disreputable. He was brought from Ireland, placed at
the Charter House, and then transferred to Oxford, where
he became acquainted with Addison. Thackeray says
that “Steele found Addison a stately college don at
Oxford.” The stateliness and the don’s rank were
attributable no doubt to the more sober character of the
English lad, for, in fact, the two men were born in the
same year, 1672. Steele, who during his life was
affected by various different tastes, first turned himself
to literature, but early in life was bitten by the hue of
a red coat and became a trooper in the Horse Guards.
To the end he vacillated in the same way. “In that
charming paper in Zhe Tatler, in which he records his
father’s death, his mother’s griefs, his own most solemn

Vit. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 165

and tender emotions, he says he is interrupted by the
arrival of a hamper of wine, ‘the same as is to be sold
at Garraway’s next week ;’ upon the receipt of which
he sends for three friends, and they fall to instantly,
drinking two bottles apiece, with great benefit to them-
selves, and not separating till two o’clock in the
morning.”

He had two wives, whom he loved dearly and treated
badly. He hired grand houses, and bought fine horses
for which he could never pay. He was often religious,
but more often drunk. As a man of letters, other men of
letters who followed him, such as Thackeray, could not
be very proud of him. But everybody loved him; and
he seems to have been the inventor of that flying
literature which, with many changes in form and manner,
has done so much for the amusement and edification of
readers ever since his time. He was always commencing,
or carrying on,—often editing,—some one of the numerous
periodicals which appeared during his time. Thackeray
mentions seven: Zhe Tatler, The Spectator, The
Guardian, The Englishman, The Lover, The Reader,
and The Theatre; that three of them are well known
‘to this day,—the three first named,—and are to be
found in all libraries, is proof that his life was not
thrown away.

I almost question Prior’s right to be in the list, unless
indeed the mastery over well-turned conceits is to be
included within the border of humour. But Thackeray
had a strong liking for Prior, and in his own humorous
way rebukes his audience for not being familiar with Zhe
‘Town and Country Mouse. He says that Prior’s epigrams
have the genuine sparkle, and compares Prior to Horace,
«¢ His song, his philosophy, his good sense, ‘his happy easy

166 THACKERAY. [oHar.

turns and melody, his loves and his epicureanism bear a
great resemblance to that most delightful and accom-
plished master.” I cannot say that I agree with this.
Prior is generally neat in his expression. Horace is
happy,—which is surely a great deal more.

All that is said of Gay, Pope, Hogarth, Smollett, and
Fielding is worth reading, and may be of great value both
to those who have not time to study the authors, and to
those who desire to have their own judgments somewhat
guided, somewhat assisted. That they were all men of
humour there can be no doubt. Whether either of them,
except perhaps Gay, would have been specially ranked as
a humorist among men of letters, may be a question.

Sterne was a humorist, and employed his pen in that
line, if ever a writer did so, and so was Goldsmith. Of
the excellence and largeness of the disposition of the one,
and the meanness and littleness of the other, it is not
necessary that I should here say much. But I will give
a short passage from our author as to each. He has been
‘quoting somewhat at length from Sterne, and thus he
ends; “And with this pretty dance and chorus the
volume artfully concludes. Even here one can’t give the
whole description. There is not a page in Sterne’s writing
but has something that were better away, a latent cor-
ruption,—a hint as of an impure presence. Some of that
dreary double entendre may be attributed to freer times
and manners than ours,—but not all. The foul satyr’s
eyes leer out of the leaves constantly. The last words the
famous author wrote were bad and wicked. The last
lines the poor stricken wretch penned were for pity and
pardon.” Now a line or two about Goldsmith, and I will
then let my reader go to the volume and study the lectures
for himself. ‘The poor fellow was never so friendless

vit. | THACKERAY’S LECTURES. 167

but that he could befriend some one; never so pinched
and wretched but he could give of his crust, and speak
his word of compassion. If he had but his flute left, he
would give that, and make the children happy in the
dreary London. courts.”

Of this too I will remind my readers,—those who have
bookshelves well-filled to adorn their houses,—that Gold-
smith stands in the front where all the young people see the
volumes. There are few among the young people who do
not refresh their sense of humour occasionally from that
shelf, Sterne is relegated to some distant and high corner.
The less often that he is taken down the better. Thackeray
makes some half excuse for him because of the greater
freedom of the times. But “the times” were the same
for the two. Both Sterne and Goldsmith wrote ‘in the
reion of George IL. ; both died in the reign of George ITT.

CHAPTER VIIL
THACKERAY ’S ‘BALLADS. ©

We have a volume of Thackeray’s poems, republished
under the name of Ballads, which is, I think, to a great
extent a misnomer. They are all readable, almost all
good,.full of humour, and with some fine touches of
pathos, most happy in their versification, and, with a few
exceptions, hitting well on the head the nail which he in-
tended to hit. But they are not on that account ballads.
Literally, a ballad isa song, but it has come to signify
a short chronicle in verse, which may be political, or
pathetic, or grotesque,—or it may have all three character-
istics or any two of them; but not on that account is
any grotesque poem a ballad,—nor, of course, any
pathetic orany political poem. Jacob Omnium’s Hoss may
fairly be called a ballad, containing as it does a chronicle
of a certain well-defined transaction; and the story of
King Canute is a ballad,—one of the best that has been
produced in our language in modern years. But such
pieces as those called The Hnd of the Play and Vanitas
Vanitatum, which are didactic as well as pathetic, are not
ballads in the common sense; nor are such songs as
The Mahogany Tree, or the little collection called Love
Songs made Hasy. The majority of the pieces are not

CMAP. VIII. } THACKERAY’S BALLADS. 169

ballads, but if they be good of the kind we should be
ungrateful to quarrel much with the name.

How very good most of them are, I did not know till I
re-read them for the purpose of writing this chapter. There
is a manife:t falling off in some few,—which has come
from that source of literary failure which is now so
common, Ifa man write a book or a poem because it is
in him to write it,—the motive power being altogether in
himself and coming from his desire to express himself,—
he will write it well, presuming him to be capable of the
effort. But if he write his book or poem simply because
a book or poem is required from him, let his capability be
what it may, it is not unlikely that he will do it badly.
Thackeray occasionally suffered from the weakness thus
produced. <A ballad from Policeman X,—Bow Street
Ballads they were first called,—was required by Punch,
and had to be forthcoming, whatever might be the poet’s
humour, by a certain time. Jacob Omnium’s Hoss is ex-
cellent. His heart and feeling were all there, on behalf
of his friend, and against that obsolete old court of justice.
But we can tell well when he was looking through the
police reports for a subject, and taking what chance might
send him, without any special interest in the matter.
The Knight and the Lady of Bath, and the Damages
Two Hundred Pounds, as they were demanded at Guild-
ford, taste as though they were written to order.

Here, in his verses as in his prose, the charm of
Thackeray’s work lies in the mingling of humour with
pathos and indignation. There is hardly a piece that is
not more or less funny, hardly a piece that is not satirical ;
—and in most of them, for those who will look a little
below the surface, there is something that will touch
them. Thackeray, though he rarely uttered a word, either

170 THACKERAY. [-CHAP.

with his pen or his mouth, in which there was not an
intention to reach our sense of humour, never was only
funny. When he was most determined to make us laugh,
he had always a further purpose ;—some pity was to be
extracted from us on behalf of the sorrows of men, or
some indignation at the evil done by them.

This is the beginning of that story as to the Two
Hundred Pounds, for which as a ballad I do not care very
much :

‘Special jurymen of England who admire your country’s laws,
‘ And proclaim a British jury worthy of the nation’s applause,

Gaily compliment each other at the issue of a cause,
Which was tried at Guildford ’sizes, this day week as ever was.

Here he is indignant, not only in regard to some mis-
carriage of justice on that special occasion, but at the
general unfitness of jurymen for the work confided to
them. “Gaily compliment yourselves,” he says, “on your
beautiful constitution, from which come such beautiful
results as those I am going to tell you!” When he re
minded us that Ivanhoe had produced Magna Charta,
there was a purpose of irony even there in regard to our
vaunted freedom. With all your Magna Charta and your
juries, what are you but snobs! There is nothing so
often misguided as general indignation, and I think that
in his judgment of outside things, in the measure which
he usually took of them, Thackeray was very frequently
misguided. A satirist by trade will learn to satirise every-
thing, till the light of the sun and the moon’s loveliness
will become evil and mean to him. I think that he was
mistaken in his views of things. But we have to do
with him as a writer, not as a political economist or a
politician. His indignation was all true, and the ex-
pression of it was often perfect. The lines in which he

VIII. | THACKERAY’S BALLADS. 171

addresses that Pallis Court, at the end of ‘Jacob
Omnium’s Hoss, are almost sublime.

O Pallis Court, you move Come down from that tribewn,
My pity most profound. Thou shameless and unjust ;
A, most amusing sport - Thou swindle, picking pockets in

' You thought it,’ be bound, The name of Truth august ;
To saddle hup a three-pound Come down, thon hoary Blas-
debt, | phemy,
. With two-and. twenty pound. For die thou shalt and must.

Good sport it is to you And go it, Jacob Homnium,
To grind the honest poor, And ply your iron pen,
To pay their just or unjust debts And rise up, Sir John Jervis,
With eight hundred percent, And shut me up that den;
for Lor ; That sty for fattening lawyers
Make haste and get your costes in, in,
They will not last much mor! On the bones of honest men.

“Come down from that tribewn, thou shameless and

unjust!” It is impossible not to feel that he felt this as
he wrote it.
. There-is a branch of his poetry which he calls,—or
which at any rate is now called, Lyra Hybernica, for which
no doubt Zhe Groves of Blarney was his model. There
have been many imitations since, of which perhaps Barham’s
baliad on the coronation was the best, “ When to West-
minster the Royal Spinster and the Duke of Leinster all in
order did repair!” Thackeray in some of his attempts
has been equally droll and equally graphic. That on The
Cristal Palace,—not that at Sydenham, but its forerunner,
the palace of the Great Exhibition,—is very good, as the
following catalogue of its contents will show ;

There’s holy saints | Alhamborough Jones
And window paints, Did paint the tones
By .Maydiayval Pugin; | Of yellow and gambouge in. :

172

There’s fountains there
And crosses fair;
There’s water-gods with urns;
There’s organs three,
To play, d’ye see ?
“God save the Queen,” by
turns.

There’s statues bright
Of marble white,
Of silver, and of copper;
And some in zine,
And some, I think
That isn’t over proper.

There’s staym ingynes,
‘That stands in lines,
Enormous and amazing,
That squeal and snoréb
Like whales in sport,
Or elephants a grazing.

THACKERAY.

[omar.

There’s carts and gigs,
And pins for pigs,
There’s dibblers and there’s
harrows,
And ploughs like toys
For little boys,
And ilegant wheel-barrows.

For thim genteels
Who ride on wheels,
There’s plenty to indulge ’em
There’s droskys snug
From Paytersbug,
And vayhycles from Bulgium.

There’s cabs on stands
And shandthry danns;
There’s waggons from New
York here ;
There’s Lapland sleighs
Have cross’d the seas,
And jaunting cyars from
Cork here.

In writing this Thackeray was a little late with his
copy for Punch; not, we should say, altogether an
uncommon accident to him. It should have heen with
the editor early on Saturday, if not before, but did not
come till late on Saturday evening. The editor, who was
among men the most good-natured and I should think
the most forbearing, either could not, or in this case would
not, insert it in the next week’s issue, and Thackeray,
angry and disgusted, sent it to The Times. In The Times
of next Monday it appeared,—very much I should think
to the delight of the readers of that august newspaper.

Mr. Molony’s account of the ball given to the
Nepaulese ambassadors by the Peninsular and Oriental
Company, is so like Barham’s coronation in the account

viii. | THACKERAY’S BALLADS. 173

it gives of the guests, that one would fancy it must be by
the same hand.

The noble Chair? stud at the stair

And bade the dhrums to thump; and he
Did thus evince to that Black Prince

The welcome of his Company.?

O fair the girls and rich the curls,
And bright the oys you saw there was
And fixed each oye you then could spoi
On General Jung Bahawther was!

This gineral great then tuck his sate,
With all the other ginerals,

Bedad his troat, his belt, his coat,
All bleezed with precious minerals;

And as he there, with princely air,
Recloinin on his cushion was,

All round about his royal chair
The squeezin and the pushin was,

O Pat, such girls, such jukes and earls,
Such fashion and nobilitee !
Just think of Tim, and fancy him
Amidst the high gentilitee !
There was the Lord de L’Huys, and the Portygeese
Ministher and his lady there,
And I recognised, with much surprise,
Our messmate, Bob O’Grady, there.

All these are very good fun,—so good in humour and
so good in expression, that it would be needless to criticise
their peculiar dialect, were it not that Thackeray has made
for himself a reputation by his writing of Irish. In this
he has been so entirely successful that for many English

. * Chair—i.e. Chairman. * Ie. The P. and O. Company.

174, THACKERAY. [orap,

readers he has established a new language which may not
improperly be called Hybernico-Thackerayan. If comedy
is to be got from peculiarities of dialect, as no doubt it is,
one form will do as well as another, so long as those who
read it know no better. So it has been with Thackeray’s
Trish, for in truth he was not familiar with the modes of
pronunciation which make up Irish brogue. Therefore,
though he is always droll, he is not true to nature: Many
an. Irishman coming to London, not unnaturally tries to
imitate the talk of Londoners, You or I, reader, were we
from the West, and were the dear County Galway to send
either of us to Parliament, would probably endeavour to
drop the dear brogue of our country, and in doing so we
should make some mistakes. It was these mistakes which
Thackeray took for the natural Irish tone. He was
amused to hear a major called “‘ Meejor,” but was unaware
that the sound arose from Pat’s affection of English soft-
ness of speech. The expression natural to the unadulter-
ated Irishman would rather be ‘“‘ Ma-ajor.” He discovers his
own provincialism, and trying to be polite and urbane, he
says ‘Meejor.” In one of the lines I have quoted there
occurs the word “troat.” Such a sound never came
naturally from the mouth of an Irishman. He puts in an
h instead of omitting it, and says “dhrink.” He comes
to London, and finding out that he is wrong with his
“dhrink,” he leaves out all the h’s he can, and
thus comes to “troat.” It is this which Thackeray has
heard. ‘There is a little piece called the Last Irish
Grievance, to which Thackeray adds a still later grievance,
by the false sounds which he elicits from the calumniated
mouth of the pretended Irish poet. Slaves are “ sleeves,”
places are “ pleeces,” Lord John is “Lard Jahn,” fatal
is “ fetal,” danger is “deenger,” and native is “ neetive,”

Vvitt.] THACKERAY’S BALLADS. 175

All these aré unintended slanders. Tea, Hibernicé, is
“tay,” please is “plaise,” sea is “say,” and ease is
“aise.” The softer sound of e is broadened out by the
natural Irishman,—not, to my ear, without a certain
euphony ;—but no one in Ireland says or hears the
reverse. The Irishman who in London might talk of
his “neetive” race, would be mincing his words to please
the ear of the cockney.

The Chronicle of the Drum would be a true ballad
all through, were it not that there is tacked on to it a
long moral in an altered metre. I do not much value the
moral, but the ballad is excellent, not only in much of its
versification and in the turns of its language, but in the
quaint and true picture it gives of the French nation.
The drummer, either by himself or by some of his family,
has drummed through a century of French battling,
caring much for his’ country and its glory, but under-
standing nothing of the causes for which he is enthu-
siastic. Whether for King, Republic, or Emperor,
whether fighting and conquering or fighting and con-
quered, he is happy as long as he can beat his drum
on a field of glory. But throughout his adventures there
is a touch of chivalry about our drummer. In all the,
episodes of his country’s career he feels much of patriotism
and something of tenderness. It is thus he sings during
the days of the Revolution :

We had taken the head of King Capet,
We called for the blood of his wife ;
Undaunted she came to the scaffold,
And bared her fair neck to the knife.
As she felt the foul fingers that touched her,
She shrank, but she deigned not to speak;
She looked with a royal disdain, |
. And died with a blush on her cheek !

176 THACKERAY. (CHAP.

"Twas thus that our country was saved!
So told us the Safety Committee !
But, psha, I’ve the heart of a soldier,—
All gentleness, mercy, and pity.
T loathed to assist at such deeds,
And my drum beat its loudest of tunes,
As we offered to justice offended,
The blood of the bloody tribunes.

Away with such foul recollections!

No more of the axe and the block.
I saw the last fight of the sections,

As they fell ’neath our guns at St. Rock.
Young Bonaparte led us that day.

And so it goes on. I will not continue the stanza,
because it contains the worst rhyme that Thackeray ever
permitted himself to use. Zhe Chronicle of the Drum has
not the finish which he achieved afterwards, but it is full
of national feeling, and carries on its purpose to the end
with an admirable persistency ;

A curse on those British assassins
Who ordered the slaughter of Ney;

A curse on Sir Hudson who tortured
The life of our hero away.

A curse on all Russians,—I hate them
On all Prussian and Austrian fry ;
And, oh, but I pray we may meet them

And fight them again ere I die.

The White Squall,—which I can hardly call a ballad,
unless any description of a scene in verse may be included
in the name,—is surely one of the most graphic descrip-
tions ever put into verse. Nothing written by Thackeray
shows more plainly his power over words and rhymes.
He draws his picture without a line omitted or .a line too
mauch, saying with apparent facility all that he has to say,

VIII]

THACKERAY’S BALLADS.

177

and so saying it that every word conveys its natural

meaning.

When a squall, upon a sudden,

Came o’er the waters scudding ;

And the clouds began to gather,

And the sea was lashed to lather,
And the lowering thunder grumbled,
And the lightning jumped and tumbled,
And the ship and all the ocean

Woke up in wild commotion.

Then the wind set up a howling,

And the poodle dog a yowling,

And the cocks began a crowing,

And the old cow raised a lowing,

As she heard the tempest blowing;
And fowls and geese did cackle,

And the cordage and the tackle

Began to shriek and crackle ;

And the spray dashed o’er the funnels,
And down the deck in runnels ;

And the rushing water soaks all,

From the seamen in the fo’ksal

To the stokers whose black faces

Peer out of their bed-places ;

And the captain, he was bawling,

And the sailors pulling, hauling,

And the quarter-deck tarpauling

Was shivered in the squalling ;

And the passengers awaken,

Most pitifully shaken ;

And the steward jumps up and hastens
For the necessary basins.

Then the Greeks they groaned and quivered,

And they knelt, and moaned, and shivered,
As the plunging waters met them,

And splashed and overset them ;

And they call in their emergence

Upon countless saints and virgins ;

And their marrowbones are bended,

And they think the world is ended.

178

THACKERAY.

And the Turkish women for’ard

' Were frightened and behorror’d ;

And shrieking and bewildering,

The mothers clutched their children ;
The men sang “ Allah! Illah!
Mashallah Bis-millah !”

As the warning waters doused them,
And splashed them and soused them
And they called upon the Prophet,
And thought but little of it.

Then all the fleas in Jewry
Jumped up and bit like fury ;
And the progeny of Jacob

Did on the main-deck wake up.
(I wot these greasy Rabbins
Would never pay for cabins) ;

And each man moaned and jabbered in

His filthy Jewish gaberdine,

In woe and lamentation,

And howling consternation.

And the splashing water drenches
Their dirty brats and wenches;

And they crawl from bales and benches,

In a hundred thousand stenches.
This was the White Squall famous,
Which latterly o’ercame us.

[ CHAP,

Peg of Limavaddy has always been very popular, and
the public have not, I think, been generally aware that
the young lady in question lived in truth at Newton

Limavady (with one 4d).

But with the correct name

Thackeray would hardly have been so successful with his

rhymes.

Citizen or Squire
Tory, Whig, or Radi-

Cal would all desire
Peg of Limavaddy.

VIIt. | THACKERAY’S BALLADS. 179

Had I Homer’s fire
Or that of Sergeant Taddy
Meetly I’d admire
Peg of Limavaddy.
And till I expire
Or till I go mad I
Will sing unto my lyre
Peg of Limavaddy.

The Cane-bottomed Chair is another, better, I think,
than Peg of Iimavaddy, as containing that mixture of
burlesque with the pathetic which belonged so peculiarly
to Thackeray, and which was indeed the very essence of
his genius.

But of all the cheap treasures that garnisn my nest,
There’s one that I love and I cherish the best.

For the finest of couches that’s padded with hair
I never would change thee, my cane-bottomed chair.

"Tis a bandy-legged, high-bottomed, worm-eaten seat,
With a creaking old back and twisted old feet;
But since the fair morning when Fanny sat there,
I bless thee and love thee, old cane-bottomed chair.
% %* #

sne comes from the past and revisits my room,
She looks as she then did all beanty and bloom ;
So smiling and tender, so fresh and so fair,
And yonder she sits in my cane-bottomed chair.

This, in’ the volume which 1 have now before me, is
followed by a picture of Fanny in the chair, to which I
cannot but take exception. I am, quite sure that when
Fanny graced the room and seated herself in the chair
of her old bachelor friend, she had not on a low dress and
loosely-flowing drawing-room shawl, nor was there a foot-
stool ready for her feet.. I doubt also the headgear. Fanny
on that occasion was-dressca mm ner morning apparel, and

N 2

180 7 THACKERAY. [OHAP.

had walked through the streets, carried no fan, and wore
no brooch but one that might be necessary for pinning her
shawl.

The Great Cossack Epic is the longest of the ballads. It
is a legend of St. Sophia of Kioff, telling how Father
Hyacinth, by the aid of St. Sophia, whose wooden statue
he carried with him, escaped across the Borysthenes with
all the Cossacks at his tail. It is very goodfun; but not
equal to many of the others. Nor is the Carmen Liilliense
quite to my taste. I should not have declared at once
that it had come from Thackeray’s hand, had I not
known it. ;

But who could doubt the Bouitllabaisse ? Who else
could have written that? Who at the same moment could
have been so merry and so melanchcoly,—could have gone
so deep into the regrets of life, with words so appropriate
to its jollities? I do not know how far my readers will
agree with me that to read it always must be a fresh
pleasure; but in order that they may agree with me, if
they can, I will give it to them entire. If there be one
whom it does not please, he will like nothing that
Thackeray ever wrote In verse.

THE BALLAD OF BOUILLABAISSE.

A street there is in Paris famons,
For which no rhyme our language yields,
Rue Neuve des Petits Champs its name is—
The New Street of the Little Fields;
And here’s an inn, not rich and splendid,
But still in comfortable case ;
The which in youth I oft attended,
To eat a bowl of Bouillabaisse.

' This Bouillabaisse a noble dish is,—
A. sort of soup, or broth, or brew

VEIE. |!

THACKERAY’S BALLADS. £81

Or hotch-potch of all sorts of fishes,

That Greenwich never could outdo ;
Green herbs, red peppers, mussels, saffron,
Soles, onions, garlic, roach, and dace:
All these you eat at Terré’s tavern,

In that one dish of Bonillabaisse,

Indeed, a rich and savoury stew ’tis;
And true philosophers, methinks,
Who love all sorts of natural beauties,
Should love good victuals and good drinks.
And Cordelier or Benedictine
Might gladly sure his lot embrace,
Nor find a fast-day too afflicting |
Which served him up a Bouillabaisse.

I wonder if the house still there is ?
Yes, here the lamp is, as before ;

The smiling red-cheeked écaillére is
Still opening oysters at the door.

Is Terré still alive and able ?
I recollect his droll grimace;

He’d come and smile before your table,
And hope you liked your Bouillabaisse.

We enter,—nothing’s changed or older. .
_ “How’s Monsieur Terré, waiter, pray?”
The waiter stares and shrugs his shoulder,—
- “Monsieur is dead this many a day.”
“Tt is the lot of saint and sinner ;
So honest Terré’s run his race.”
‘¢ What will Monsieur require for dinner ?”
“Say, do you still cook Bouillabaisse ? ”

“Oh, oni, Monsieur,” ’s the waiter’s answer,
‘Quel vin Monsieur désire-t-il P ”

“Tell me a good one.” “ That I can, sir:
The chambertin with yellow seal.”

So Terré’s gone,” I say, and sink in
My old accustom’d corner-place ;

“He's done with feasting and with drinking,

With Burgundy and Bouillabaisse.”

182

THACKERAY.

My old accustomed corner here is,
The table still is in the nook;

‘Ah! vanish’d many a busy year is

This well-known chair since last I took.
When first I saw ye, cari luoghi,

I'd scarce a beard upon my face,
And now a grizzled, grim old fogy,

I sit and wait for Bouillabaisse.

Where are you, old companions trusty,
Of early days here met to dine?
Come, waiter! quick, a flagon crusty ;
I'll pledge them in the good old wine.
The kind old voices and old faces
‘My memory can quick retrace ;
Around the board they take their places,
And share the wine and Bouillabaisse.

There’s Jack has made a wondrous marriage ;
There’s langhing Tom is laughing yet ;
There’s brave Augustus drives his carriage ;
There’s poor old Fred in the Gazette ;
O’er James’s head the grass is growing.
Good Lord! the world has wagged apace
Since here we set the claret flowing,
' And drank, and ate the Bouillabaisse.

Ah me! how quick the days are flittizg!
J mind me of a time that’s gone,
When here I’d sit, as now I’m sitting, .
In this same place,—but not alone. . “
A fair young face was nestled near me,
A dear, dear face looked fondly up,
And sweetly spoke and smiled to cheer me!
There’s no one now to share my cup. .

(a * ik a
I drink it as the Fates ordain it. 9“
Come fill it, and have done with rhymes;

Fill up the lonely glass, and drain it
In memory of dear ‘old times. --:'’

forap

VIII. ] THACKERAY’S BALLADS. 183

Welcome the wine, whate’er the seal is;
And sit you down and say your grace
With thankful heart, whate’er the meal is.
Here comes the smoking Bouillabaisse.

IT am not disposed to say that Thackeray will hold a
high place among English poets. He would have been
the first to ridicule such an assumption made on his
behalf. But I think that his verses will be more popular
than those of many highly reputed poets, and that as years
roll on they will gain rather than lose in public estimation.

CHAPTER IX.
THACKERAY'’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK.

A NOVEL in style should be easy, lucid, and of course
grammatical. The same may be said of any book ; but that
which is intended to recreate should be easily understood,
—for which purpose lucid narration is an essential. In
matter it should be moral and amusing. In manner it
may be realistic, or sublime, or ludicrous ;—or it may
be all these if the author can combine them. As to
Thackeray’s performance in style and matter I will say
something further on. His manner was mainly realistic,
and I will therefore speak first of that mode of expres-
sion which was peculiarly his own.

Realism in style has not all the ease which seems to
belong to it. It is the object of the author who affects
it so to communicate with his reader that all his words
shall seem to be natural to the occasion. We do not
think the language of Dogberry natural, when he tells
neighbour Seacole that “to write and read comes by
nature.” That is ludicrous. Nor is the language of
Hamlet natural when he shows to his mother the portrait
of his father ;

See what a grace was seated on this brow;
Hyperion’s curls ; the front of Jove himself;
An eye like Mars, to threaten and command,

cHAP, 1X] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND WORK. 185

That is sublime. Constance is natural when she turns
away from the Cardinal, declaring that

He talks to me that never had a son.

In one respect both the sublime and Iudicrous are
easier than the realistic. They are not required to be
true. A man with an imagination and culture may
feign either of them without knowing the ways of men.
To be realistic you must know accurately that which you
describe. How often do we find in novels that the
author makes an attempt at realism and falls into a
bathos of absurdity, because he cannot use appropriate
language? ‘No human being ever spoke like that,” we
say to ourselves,—while we should not question the
naturalness of the produetion, either in the grand or
the ridiculous.

And yet in very truth the realistic must not be true,
——but just so far removed from truth as to suit the
erroneous idea of truth which the reader may be supposed
to entertain. For were a novelist to narrate a conversation
‘between two persons of fair but not high education, and
to use the ill-arranged words and fragments of speech which
are really common in such conversations, he would seem
to have sunk to the ludicrous, and to be atiributimg to
the interlocutors a mode of language much beneath them.
Though in fact true, it would seem to be far from natural.
But on the other hand, were he to put words grammatically
correct into the mouths of his personages, and to round
off and to complete the spoken sentences, the ordinary
reader would instantly feel such a style to be stilted and
unreal, This reader would not analyse it, but would in
some dim but sufficiently critical manner be aware that
his author was not providing him with a naturally spoken

186 THACKERAY. . formar.

dialogue. To produce the desired effect the narrator
must go between the two. He must mount somewhat
above the ordinary conversational powers of such persons
as are to be represented,—lest be disgust. But he must
by no means soar into correct phraseology,—lest he offend.
The realistic,—by which we mean that which shall seem
to be real,—lies between the two, and in reaching it the
writer has not only to keep his proper distance on both
sides, but has to maintain varying distances in accord-
ance with the position, mode of life, and education of the
.speakers. Lady Castlewood in Zsmond would not
have been properly made to speak with absolute pre-
cision ; but she goes nearer to the mark than her more
ignorant lord, the viscount ; less near, however, than her
better-educated kinsman, Henry Esmond. He, however,
is not made to speak altogether by the card, or he

would be unnatural. Nor would each of them speak
always in the same strain, but they would alter their
language according to their companion,—according even
to the hour of the day. All this the reader unconsciously
perceives, and will not think the language to be natural
unless the proper variations be there.

In simple narrative the rule is the same as in dialogue,
though it does not admit of the same palpable deviation
from correct construction. The story of any incident, to
be realistic, will admit neither of sesquipedalian grandeur
nor of grotesque images. The one gives an idea of
romance and the other of burlesque, to neither of which
is truth supposed to appertain. We desire to soar
frequently, and then we try romance. We desire to
recreate ourselves with the easy and droll. Dulce est
desipere in loco. Then we have recourse to burlesque.
But in neither do we expect human nature.

Ix.| THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 187

» [cannot but think that inthe hands of the novelist
the middle course is the most powerful. Much as we
may delight in burlesque, we cannot claim for it the
power of achieving great results. So much I think will
be granted. For the sublime we look rather to poetry
than to prose, and though I will give one or two instances
just’ now in which it has been used with great effect in
prose fiction, it does not come home to the heart, teaching
‘a lesson; as does the realistic. The girl who reads is
‘touched by Lucy Ashton, but she feels herself to be con-
‘vinced of the facts as to Jeanie Deans, and asks herself
whether she might not emulate them.

Now as to the realism of Thackeray, I must rather
appeal to my readers than attempt to prove it by quota-
tion. Whoever it is that speaks in his pages, does it not
seen that such a person would certainly have used such
words on such an occasion? If there be need of exami-
nation to learn whether it be so or not, let the reader
study all that falls from the mouth of Lady Castlewood
through the, novel called Esmond, or all that falls from
the mouth of Beatrix. They are persons peculiarly situ-
ated,—noble women, but who have still lived much out
of the world. The. former is always conscious of a
‘sorrow ; the latter is always striving after an effect ;—and
both on this account are difficult of management. A
period for the story has been chosen which is strange and
unknown to us,.and which has required a peculiar lan-
guage. One would have said beforehand that whatever
might be the charms of the book, it would not be natural.
And yet the ear is never wounded by a tone that is false.
Tt is not always the case that in novel reading the ear
should be wounded -because the words spoken are un-
natural. Bulwer does: not wound, though he never puts

188 THACKERAY. [cHAP

into the mouth of any of his persons words such as
would have been spoken, They are not expected from
him. It is something else that he provides. From
Thackeray they are expected,—and from many others.
But Thackeray never disappoints. Whether it be a great
duke, such as he who was to have married Beatrix, or a
mean chaplain, such as Tusher, or Captain Steele the
humorist, they talk,—not as they would have talked
probably, of which I am no judge,—but as we feel that
they might have talked. We find ourselves willing to
take it as proved because itis there, which is the strongest
possible evidence of the realistic capacity of the writer.
As to the sublime in novels, it is not to be supposed
that any very high rank of sublimity is required to put
such works within the pale of that definition. I allude
to those in which an attempt is made to soar above the
ordinary actions and ordinary language cf life. We may
take as an instance The Mysteries of Udolpho. That is
intended to be sublime throughout. Even the writer
never for a moment thought of descending to real life.
She must have been untrue to her own idea of her own
business had she done so. It is all stilted,—all of .a
certain. altitude among the clouds. It has been in its
time a popular book, and has had its world of readers.
Those readers no doubt preferred the diluted romance of
Mrs. Radcliff to the condensed realism of Fielding. At
any rate they did not look for realism. Pelham may be
taken as another instance of the sublime, though there is
so much in it that is of the world worldly, though an
intentional fall to the ludicrous is often made in it. The
personages talk in glittering dialogues, throwing about
. philosophy, science, and the classics, in a manner which
is always suggestive and often amusing. The. book is

1x.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 189

brilliant with intellect. But no word is ever spoken as it
would have been spoken ;—no detail is ever narrated as
it would have occurred. Bulwer no doubt regarded
novels as romantic, and would have looked with contempt
on any junction of realism and romance, though, in
varying his work, he did not think it beneath him to vary
his sublimity with the ludicrous. The sublime in novels
is no doubt most effective when it breaks out, as though
by some burst of nature, in the midst of a story true to
life. “If,” said Evan Maccombich, “the Saxon gentle-
men are laughing because a poor man such as me thinks
my life, or the life of six of my degree, is worth that of
Vich Ian Vohr, it’s like enough they may be very right ;.
but if they laugh because they think I would not keep
my word and come back to redeem him, I can tell them
they: ken neither the heart of a Hielandman nor the
honour of a gentleman.” That is sublime. And, again,
when Balfour of Burley.slaughters Bothwell, the death
scene is sublime. “ Die, bloodthirsty dog!” said
Burley. “Die as thou hast lived! Die like the beasts
that perish—hoping nothing, believing nothing !”
“And fearing nothing,” said Bothwell. Horrible as is
the picture, it is sublime. As is also that speech of Meg
Merrilies, as she addresses Mr. Bertram, standing on the
bank. “Ride your ways,” said the gipsy; “ride your
ways, Laird of Ellangowan; ride your ways, Godfrey
Bertram. This day have ye quenched seven smoking
hearths; see if the fire in your ain parlour burn the
blyther for that. Ye have riven the thack off seven cottar
houses; look if your ain rooftree stand the faster. Ye
may stable your stirks in the shealings at Derneleugh ;
see that the hare does not couch on the hearthstane at
Ellangowan.” That is romance, and reaches the very

190". : THACKERAY. - (omar,

height of the sublime. That does not offend, impossible
though it be that any old woman should have spoken
such words, because it does in truth lift the reader up
among the bright stars. It is thus that the sublime may
be mingled with the realistic, if the writer has the power.
Thackeray also rises in that way to a high pitch, though
not in many instances. Romance does not often justify
to him an absence of truth. The scene between Lady
Castlewood and the Duke of Hamilton is one, when she
explains to her child’s suitor who Henry Esmond is.
“My daughter may receive presents from the head of
our house,” says the lady, speaking up for her kinsman.
“My daughter may thankfully take kindness from her
father’s, her mother’s, her brother’s dearest friend.” The
whole scene is of the same nature, and is evidence of
Thackeray’s capacity for the sublime. And again, when
the same lady welcomes the same kinsman on his return
from the wars, she rises as high. But as I have already
quoted a part of the passage in the chapter on this novel,
I will not repeat it here.

It may perhaps be said of the sublime in novels,—which
I have endeavoured to describe as not being generally of
a high order,—that it is apt to become cold, stilted, and.
unsatisfactory. What may. be done by impossible castles
among impossible mountains, peopled by impossible
heroes and heroines, and fraught with impossible horrors,
The Mysteries of Udolpho have shown us. But they re-
quire a patient reader, and one who can content himself:
with a long protracted and most unemotional excitement.’
The sublimity which is effected by sparkling speeches is
better, if the speeches really have something in them
beneath the sparkles. Those of Bulwer generally: have. |
Those of his imitators are often without anything, the

x.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 191

sparkles even hardly sparkling. At the best they fatigue ;
and a novel, if it fatigues, is unpardonable. Its only
excuse is to be found in the amusement it affords. It
should instruct also, no doubt, but it never will do so
unless it hides its instruction and amuses. Scott under-
stood all this, when he allowed himself only such sudden
bursts as I have described. Even in The Bride of
Lammermoor, which I do not regard as among the best of
his performances, as he soars high into the sublime, so
does he descend low into the ludicrous.

In this latter division of pure fiction,—the burlesque, as
it is commonly called, or the ludicrous,—Thackeray is
quite as much at home as in the realistic, though, the
vehicle being less powerful, he has achieved smaller results
by it. Manifest as are the objects in his view when he
wrote The Hoggarty Diamond or The Legend of the
Rhine, they were less important and less evidently effected
than those attempted by Vanity Fair and Pendennis.
Captain Shindy, the Snob, does not tell us so plainly
what is nota gentleman as does Colonel Newcome what
is. Nevertheless the ludicrous has, with Thackeray, been
very powerful, and very delightful.

In trying to describe what is done by literature of this
elass, it is especially necessary to remember that different
readers are affected in a different way. That which is one
man’s meat is another man’s poison. In the sublime,
when the really grand bas been reached, it is the reader’s
own fault if he be not touched. We know that many
are indifferent to the soliloquies of Hamlet, but we do
not hesitate to declare to ourselves that they are so
because they lack the power of appreciating grand lan-
guage.. We.do not. scruple to attribute to those who are
indifferent sore inferiority of intelligence. And in regard

192 THACKERAY. [cHAP.

to the realistic, when the truth of a well-told story or
life-like character does not come home, we think that
then, .too, there is deficiency in the critical ability. But
there is nothing necessarily lacking to a man because he.
does not enjoy The Heathen Chinee or The Biglow Papers ;
and the man to whom these delights of American humour,
are leather and prunello may be of all the most enraptured
by the wit of Sam Weller or the mock piety of Pecksniff.
It is a matter of taste and not of intellect, as one man
likes caviare after his dinner, while another prefers apple-
pie; and the man himself cannot, or, as far as we can
see, does not direct his own taste in the one matter more
than in the other. |

Therefore I cannot ask others to share with me the de-
light which I have in the various and peculiar expressions
of the ludicrous which are common to Thackeray. Some
considerable portion of it consists in bad spelling. We
may say that Charles James Harrington Fitzroy Yellow-
plush, or C. FitzJeames De La Pluche, as he is afterwards
called, would be nothing but for his “ orthogwaphy so care-
fully inaccuwate.” As I have before said, Mrs. Malaprop
had seemed to have reached the height of this humour,
and in having done so to have made any repetition un-
palatable. But Thackeray’s studied blundering is alto-
gether different from that of Sheridan. Mrs. Malaprop
uses her words in a delightfully wrong sense, Yellow-
plush would be a very intelligible, if not quite an accurate
writer, had he not made for himself special forms of
English words altogether new to the eye.

“My ma wrapped up my buth ina mistry. I may be
illygitmit; I may have been changed at nus; but I’ve
always had gen’l’m’nly tastes through life, and have no
doubt that I come of a gen'’'m’nly origum.” We cannot

1z.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 193

admit that there is wit, or even humour, in bad spelling
alone. Were it not that Yellowplush, with his bad
spelling, had so much to say for himself, there would be
nothing in it; but there is always a sting of satire directed
against some real vice, or some growing vulgarity, which
is made sharper by the absurdity of the language. In
The Diary of George IV. there are the following reflections
on a certain correspondence ; “ Wooden you phansy, now,
that the author of such a letter, instead of writun about
pipple of tip-top quality, was describin’ Vinegar Yard 1
Would you beleave that the lady he was a-ritin’ to was a
chased modist lady of honour and mother of a family ?
O trumpery / o morris {as Homer says. This is a higeous
pictur of manners, such as I weap to think of, as every
morl man must weap.” We do not wonder that when he.
makes his “ajew” he should have been called up to be
congratulated on the score of his literary performances
by his master, before the Duke, and Lord Bagwig, and
Dr. Larner, and “ Sawedwadgeorgeearllittnbulwig.” All
that Yellowplush says or writes are among the pearls
which Thackeray was continually scattering abroaa.

But this of the distinguished footman was only one
of the forms of the ludicrous which he was accustomed to
use in the furtherance of some purpose which he had at
heart. It was his practice to clothe things most revolting
with an assumed grace and dignity, and to add to the
weight of his condemnation by the astounding mendacity
of the parody thus drawn. There was a grim humour in
this which has been displeasing to some, as seeming to
hold out to vice a hand which has appeared for too long
a time to be friendly. As we are disposed to be not
altogether sympathetic with.a detective policeman who
shall have spent a jolly night with a delinquent, for the

0

194 THACKERAY. [owAP.

sake of tracing home the suspected guilt to his late comrade,
60 are some disposed to be almost angry with our author,
who seems to be too much at home with his raseals, and
to live with them on familiar terms till we doubt whether
he does not forget their rascality. Barry Lyndon is the
strongest example we have of this style of the ludicrous,
and the critics of whom I speak have thought that our
friendly relations with Barry have been too genial, too
apparently genuine, so that it might almost be doubtful
whether during the narrative we might not, at this ot
the other crisis, be rather with him than against him.
“After all,” the reader might say, on coming to that
passage in which Barry defends his trade as a gambler,—
a passage which I have quoted in speaking of the novel,—
“after all, this man is more hero than scoundrel ;” so well
is the burlesque humour maintained, so well does the
scoundrel hide his own villany. I can easily understand
that to some it should seem too long drawn out. To me
it seems to be the perfection of humour,—and of philo-
sophy. If such a one as Barry Lyndon, a man full of
intellect, can be made thus to love and cherish his vice,
and to believe in its beauty, how much more necessary is
it to avoid the footsteps which lead to it? But, as I have
said above, there is no standard by which to judge of the
excellence of the ludicrous as there is of the sublime, and
even the realistic.

No writer ever had a stronger proclivity towards
parody than Thackeray; and we may, I think, confess
that there is no form of literary drollery more dangerous.
The parody will often mar the gem of which it coarsely
reproduces the outward semblance. The word “ damaged,”
used instead of “damask,” has destroyed to my ear for

i.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 195

ever the music of one of the sweetest passages in Shakes-
peare. Bnt it must be acknowledged of Thackeray that,
fond as he is of this branch of humour, he has done
little or no injury by his parodies. They run over with
fun, but are so contrived that they do not lessen the
flavour of the original. I have given in one of the
preceding chapters a little set of verses of his own,
called Zhe Willow Tree, and his own parody on his
own work. There the reader may see how effective a
parody may be in destroying the sentiment of the piece
parodied. But in dealing with other authors he has
been grotesque without being severely critical, and has
been very like, without making ugly or distasteful that
which he has imitated. No one who has admired
Coningsby will admire it the less because of Codlingsby.
Nor will the undoubted romance of Hugene Aram be
lessened in the estimation of any reader of novels by the
well-told career of George de Barnwell. One may say
that to laugh Ivanhoe out of face, or to lessen the glory
of that immortal story, would be beyond the power of
any farcical effect. Thackeray In his Rowena and
Rebecca certainly had no such purpose. Nothing of
Ivanhoe is injured, nothing made less valuable than it
was before, yet, of all prose parodies in the language, |
it is perhaps the most perfect. Every character is main-
tained, every incident has a taste of Scott. It has the
twang of Ivanhoe from beginning to end, and yet there is
not a word in it by which the author of Ivanhoe
could have been offended. But then there is the purpose
beyond that of the mere parody. Prudish women have
to be laughed at, and despotic kings, and parasite lords
and bishops. The ludicrous alone is but poor fun; but

196 THACKERAY. [orap.

when the ludicrous has a meaning, it can be very effective
in the hands of such a master as this.

“He to die!” resumed the bishop. “He a mortal like to us!
Death was not for him intended, though communis omnibus.
Keeper, you are irreligious, for to talk and cavil thus!”

So much I have said of the manner in which Thackeray
did his work, endeavouring to represent human nature as
he saw it, so that his readers should learn to love what
is good, and to hate what is evil. As to the merits of
his style, it will be necessary to insist on them the less,
because it has been generally admitted to be easy, lucid, and
grammatical. I call that style easy by which the writer
has succeeded in conveying to the reader that which the
reader is intended to receive with the least possible amount
of trouble to him. I call that style lucid which conveys to
the reader most accurately all that the writer wishes to
convey on any subject. The two virtues will, I think,
be seen to be very different. An author may wish to give
an idea that a certain flavour is bitter. He shall leave a con-
viction that it is simply disagreeable. Then he is not lucid.
But he shall convey so much as that, in such a manner
as to give the reader no trouble in arriving at the conclu-
sion. Therefore he is easy. The subject here suggested
is as little complicated as possible ; but in the intercourse
which is going on continually between writers and readers,
affairs of all degrees of complication are continually being
discussed, of a nature so complicated that the inexperi-
enced writer is puzzled at every turn to express himself,
and the altogether inartistic writer fails to do so. Who
among writers has not to acknowledge that he is often
unable to tell all that he has to tell? Words refuse to

do it for him. He struggles and stumbles and alters and

1x.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 197

adds, but finds at last that he has gone either too far or
not quite far enough. Then there comes upon him the
necessity of choosing between two evils. He must
either give up the fulness of his thought, and content
himself with presenting some fragment of it in that lucid
arrangement of words which he affects; or he must
bring out his thought with ambages; he must mass his
sentences inconsequentially ; he must struggle up hill almost
hopelessly with his phrases,—so that at the end the reader
will have to labour as he himself has laboured, or else to
leave behind much of the fruit which it has been intended
that he should garner. It is the ill-fortune of some to be
neither easy or lucid ; and there is nothing more wonderful
in the history of letters than the patience of readers when
called upon to suffer under the double calamity. It is as
though a man were reading a dialogue of Plato, under-
standing neither the subject nor the language. But it is
often the case that one has to be sacrificed to the other.
The pregnant writer will sometimes solace himself by
declaring that it is not his business to supply intelligence
to the reader; and then, in throwing out the entirety of
his thought, will not stop to remember that he cannot
hope to scatter his ideas far and wide unless he can make
them easily intelligible. Then the writer who is deter-
mined that his book shall not be put down because it
is troublesome, is too apt to avoid the knotty bits and
shirk the rocky turns, because he cannot with ease to
himself make them easy to others. If this be acknow-
ledged, I shall be held to be right in saying not only that
ease and lucidity in style are different virtues, but that
they. are often opposed to each other. They may, how-
ever, be combined, and then the writer will have really
learned the art of writing, Omne tulit punctum qui

198 THACKERAY. [omar,

miscuit utile dulci. It is to be done, I believe, in all
languages. A man by art and practice shall at least obtain
such a masterhood over words as to express all that he
thinks, in phrases that shall be easily understood.

In such a small space as can here be allowed, I cannot
give instances to prove that this has been achieved by
Thackeray. Nor would instances prove the existence of
the virtue, though instances might the absence. The proof
lies in the work of the man’s life, and can only become
plain to those who have read his writings. I must refer
readers to their own experiences, and ask them whether
they have found themselves compelled to study passages in
Thackeray in order that they might find a recondite mean-
ing, or whether they have not been sure that they and
the author have together understood all that there was
to understand in the matter. Have they run backward
over the passages, and then gone on, not quite sure
what the author has meant? If not, then he has been
easy and lucid. We have not had it so easy with all
modern writers, nor with all that are old. I may best
perhaps explain my meaning by taking something written
long ago ; something very valuable, in order that I may
not damage my argument by comparing the easiness vf
Thackeray with the harshness of some author who has in
other respects failed of obtaining approbation. If you
take the play of Cymbeline you will, I think, find it to be
anything but easy reading. Nor is Shakespeare always
lucid. For purposes of his own he will sometimes force
his readers to doubt his meaning, even after prolonged
study. It has ever been so with Hamlet. My readers
will not, I think, be so crossgrained with me as to suppose
that I am putting Thackeray as a master of style above
Shakespeare. I am only endeavouring to explain by

rx.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 199

reference to the great master the condition of literary pro-
duction which he attained. Whatever Thackeray says, the
reader cannot fail to understand; and whatever Thackeray
attempts to communicate, he succeeds in conveying.

That he is grammatical I must leave to my readers’
judgment, with a simple assertion in his favour. There
are some who say that grammar,—by which I mean accu-
racy of composition, in accordance with certain acknow-
ledged rules,—is only a means to an end; and that, ifa
writer can absolutely achieve the end by some other mode
of his own, he need not regard the prescribed means. If
a man can so write as to be easily understood, and to
convey lucidly that which he has to convey without
accuracy of grammar, why should he subject himself to
unnecessary trammels? Why not make a path for him-
self, if the path so made will certainly lead him whither
he wishes to go? The answer is, that no other path will
lead others whither he wishes to carry them but that
which is common to him and to those others. It is
necessary that there should be a ground equally familiar
to the writer and to his readers. If there be no such
common ground, they will certainly not come into full
accord. There have been recusants who, by a certain
acuteness of their own, have partly done so,— wilful recu-
sants ; but they have been recusants, not to the extent of
discarding grammar,—which no writer could do and not
be altogether in the dark,—but so far as to have created
for themselves a phraseology which has been picturesque
by reason of its illicit vagaries; as a woman will some-
times please ill-instructed eyes and ears by little departures
from feminine propriety. They have probably laboured
in their vocation as sedulously as though they had
striven to be correct, and have achieved at the best but a

200 THACKERAY. [onap,

short-lived success ;—as is the case also with the uncon-
ventional female. The charm of the disorderly soon
loses itself in the ugliness of disorder. And there are
others rebellious from grammar, who are, however, hardly
to be called rebels, because the laws which they break
have never been altogether known to them. Among
those very dear to me in English literature, one or two
might be named of either sort, whose works, though they
have that in them which will insure to them a long life,
will become from year to year less valuable and less
venerable, because their authors have either scorned or
have not known that common ground of language on
which the author and his readers should stand together.
My purport here is only with Thackeray, and I say that
he stands always on that common ground. He quarrels
with none of the laws. As the lady who is most attentive
to conventional propriety may still have her own fashion
of dress and her own mode of speech, so had Thackeray
very manifestly his own style; but it is one the correctness
of which has never been impugned.

I hold that gentleman to be the best dressed whose
dress no one observes. Jam not sure but that the same
may be said of an author’s written language. Only, where
shall we find an example of such perfection? Always
easy, always lucid, always correct, we may find them ; but
who is the writer, easy, lucid, and correct, who has not
impregnated his writing with something of that personal
flavour which we call mannerism? To speak of authors
well known to all readers—Does not The Rambler taste of
Johnson ; The Decline and Fall, of Gibbon; The Middle
Ages, of Hallam ; The History of England, of Macaulay ;
and The Invasion of the Crimea, of Kinglake? Do we
not know the elephantine tread of The Saturday, und the

.1x.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 201

precise toe of The Spectator? I have sometimes thought
that Swift has been nearest to the mark of any,—writing
English and not writing Swift. But I doubt whether an
accurate observer would not trace even here the “mark of
the beast.” Thackeray, too, has a strong flavour of
Thackeray. I am inclined to think that his most besetting
sin in style,—-the little earmark by which he is most con-
spicuous,—is a certain affected familiarity. He indulges
too frequently in little confidences with individual readers,
in which pretended allusions to himself are frequent.
“What would you do? what would you say now, if you
were in such a position?” he asks, He describes this
practice of his in the preface to Pendennis. “It is a sort
of confidential talk between writer and reader... .. In
the course of his volubility the perpetual speaker must of
necessity lay bare his own weaknesses, vanities, pecu-
liarities.” In the short contributions to periodicals on
which he tried his ’prentice hand, such addresses and
conversations were natural and efficacious ; but in a larger
work of fiction they cause an absence of that dignity
to which even a novel may aspire. You feel that each
morsel as you read it is a detached bit, and that it has
all been written in detachments. The book is robbed
of iis integrity by a certain good-humoured geniality of
language, which causes the reader to be almost too much at
home with his author. There is a saying that fumiliarity
breeds contempt, and I have been sometimes inclined to
think that our author has sometimes failed to stand up
for himself with sufficiency of ‘“ personal deportment.”
In other respects Thackeray’s style is excellent. AsI
have said before, the reader always understands his words
without an effort, and receives all that the author has to

give.

202 THACKERAY. [oHAr,

There now remains to be discussed the matter of our
author’s work. The manner and the style are but the
natural wrappings in which the goods have been prepared
for the market. Of these goods it is no doubt true that
unless the wrappings be in some degree meritorious the
article will not be accepted at all; but it is the kernel
which we seek, which, if it be not of itself sweet and
digestible, cannot be made serviceable by any shell how-
ever pretty or easy to be cracked. I have said previously
that it is the business of a novel to instruct in morals
and to amuse. I will go further, and will add, having
been for many years a most prolific writer of novels
myself, that I regard him who can put himself into close
communication with young people year after year without
making some attempt to do them good, as a very sorry
fellow indeed. However poor your matter may be, how-
ever near you may come to that “foolishest of existing
mortals,” as Carlyle presumes some unfortunate novelist
to be, still, if there be those who read your works, they
will undoubtedly be more or less influenced by what they
find there. And it is because the novelist amuses that
he is thus influential. The sermon too often has no such
effect, because it is applied with the declared intention of
having it. The palpable and overt dose the child rejects ;
but that which is cunningly insinuated by the aid of jam
or honey is accepted unconsciously, and goes on upon its
curative mission. So it is with the novel. It is taken
because of its jam and honey. But, unlike the honest
simple jam and honey of the household cupboard, it is
never wnmixed with physic. There will be the dose
within it, either curative or poisonous. The girl will
be taught modesty or immodesty, truth or falsehood ; the
lad will be taught honour or dishonour, simplicity or

1x.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 208

affectation. Without the lesson the amusement will not
be there. There are novels which certainly can teach
nothing ; but then neither can they amuse any one.

I should be said to insist absurdly on the power of
my own confraternity if I were to declare that the bulk of
the young people in the upper and middle classes receive
their moral teaching chiefly from the novels they read.
Mothers would no doubt think of their own sweet teaching;
fathers of the examples which they set; and schoolmasters
of the excellence of their instructions. Happy is the
country that has such mothers, fathers, and school-
masters! But the novelist creeps in closer than the
schoolmaster, closer than the father, closer almost than
the mother. He is the chosen guide, the tutor whom
the young pupil chooses for herself. She retires with him,
suspecting no lesson, safe against rebuke, throwing her-
self head and heart into the narration as she can hardly
do into her task-work ; and there she is taught,——how she
shall learn to love; how she shall receive the lover when
he comes; how far she should advance to meet the joy ;
why she should be reticent, and not throw herself at once
into this new delight. It is the same with the young
man, though he would be more prone even than she to
reject the suspicion of such tutorship. But he too will
there learn either to speak the truth, or to lie; and will
receive from his novel lessons either of real manliness,
or of that affected apishness and tailor-begotten demeanour
which too many professors of the craft give out as their
dearest precepts.

At any rate the close intercourse is admitted. Where
is the house now from which novels are tabooed? Is
it not common to allow them almost indiscriminately,
so that young and old each chooses his own novel?

204, THACKERAY. [cHap.

Shall he, then, to whom this close fellowship is allowed,
—this inner confidence,—shall he not be careful what
words he uses, and what thoughts he expresses, when he
sits in council with his young friend? This, which it
will certainly be his duty to consider with so much care,
will be the matter of his work. We know what was
thought of such matter, when Lydia in the play was
driven to the necessity of flinging “‘ Peregrine Pickle
under the toilet,” and thrusting “ Lord Admwell under
the sofa.” We have got beyond that now, and are
tolerably sure that our girls do not hide their novels.
The more freely they are allowed, the more necessary
is it that he who supplies shall take care that they are
worthy of the trust that is given to them.

Now let the reader ask himself what are the lessons
which Thackeray has taught. Let him send his memory
running back over all those characters of whom we have
just been speaking, and ask himself whether any girl
has been taught to be immodest, or any man unmanly,
by what Thackeray has written. A novelist has two
modes of teaching,—by good example or bad. It is not to
be supposed that because the person treated of be evil, there-
fore the precept will be evil. If so, some personages with
whom we have been made well acquainted from our youth
upwards, would have been omitted in our early lessons.
Jt may be a question whether the teaching is not more
efficacious which comes from the evil example. What
story was ever more powerful in showing the beauty of
feminine reticence, and the horrors of feminine evil-doing,
than the fate of Effie Deans? The Templar would have
betrayed a woman to his lust, but has not encouraged
others by the freedom of his life. Varney was utterly
bad,—but though a gay courtier, he has enticed no others

ix.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 205

to go the way that he went. So it has been with
Thackeray. His examples have been generally of that
kind,—but they have all been efficacious in their teaching
on the side of modesty and manliness, truth and simplicity.
When some girl shall have traced from first to last the
charactr of Beatrix, what, let us ask, will be the result
on her mind? Beatrix was born noble, clever, beautiful,
with certain material advantages, which it was within her
compass to improve by her nobility, wit, and beauty.
She was quite alive to that fact, and thought of those
material advantages, to the utter exclusion, in our mind,
of any idea of moral goodness. She realised it all, and
told herself that that was the game she would play.
“Twenty-five!” says she; “and in eight years no man
has ever touched my heart!” That is her boast when she
is about to be married,—her only boast of herself, “A
most detestable young woman!” some willsay. “An
awful example!” others will add. Not a doubt of it, She
proves the misery of her own career so fully that no one
will follow it. The example is so awful that it will surely
deter. The girl will declare to herself that not in that
way will she look for the happiness which she hopes to
enjoy; and the young man will say as he reads it, that
no Beatrix shall touch his heart.

You may go through all his characters with the same
effect. Pendennis will be scorned because he is light;
Warrington loved because he is strong and merciful ; Dobbin
will be honoured because he is unselfish; and the old
colonel, though he be foolish, vain, and weak, almost
worshipped because he is so true a gentleman. It is in
the handling of questions such as these that we have to
look for the matter of the novelist,—those moral lessons
which he mixes up with his jam and his honey. I say

206 THACKERAY. [oHar.

that with Thackeray the physic is always curative and
never poisonous. He may be admitted safely into that
close fellowship, and be allowed to accompany the dear
ones to their retreats. The girl will never become bold
under his preaching, or taught to throw herself at men’s
heads. Nor will the lad receive a false flashy idea of
what becomes a youth, when he is first about to take his
place among men.

As to that other question, whether Thackeray be
amusing as well as salutary, I must leave it to public
opinion. There is now being brought out of his works a
more splendid edition than has ever been produced in any
age or any country of the writings of such an author.
A certain fixed number of copies only is being issued, and
each copy will cost £33 12s. when completed. It is under-
stood that a very large proportion of the edition has been
already bought or ordered. Cost, it will be said, is a bad
test of excellence. It will not prove the merit of a book
any more than it will of a horse. But it is proof of the
popularity of the book. Print and illustrate and bind up
some novels how you will, no one will buy them. Pre-
vious to these costly volumes, there have been two entire
editions of his works since the author’s death, one com-
paratively cheap and the other dear. Before his death
his stories had been scattered in all imaginable forms. I
may therefore assert that their charm has been proved by
their popularity.

There remains for us only this question,—whether the
nature of Thackeray’s works entitle him to be called a
cynic. The word is one which is always used in a bad
sense. ‘Of a dog; currish,” is the definition which we
get from Johnson,—quite correctly, and in accordance with
its etymology. And he gives us examples. “ How vilely

ix.] THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK, 207

does this cynic rhyme,” he takes from Shakespeare ; and
Addison speaks of aman degenerating into a cynic. That
Thackeray’s nature was soft and kindly,—gentle almost to
a isalt,—has heen shown elsewhere. But they who have
called him a cynic have spoken of him merely as a
writer,—and as writer he has certainly taken upon himself
the special task of barking at the vices and follies of
the world around him. Any satirist might in the same
way be called a cynic in so far as his satire goes. Swift
was a cynic certainly. Pope was cynical when he was a
satirist. Juvenal was all cynical, because he was all
satirist. If that be what is meant, Thackeray was cer-
tainly a cynic. But that is not all that’ the word implies.
It intends to go back beyond the work of the man, and to
describe his heart. It says of any satirist so described
that he has given himself up to satire, not because things
have been evil, but because he himself has been evil.
Hamlet is a satirist, whereas Thersites is a cynic. If
Thackeray be judged after this fashion, the word is as
inappropriate to the writer as to the man.

But it has to be confessed that Thackeray did allow
his’ intellect to be too thoroughly saturated with the
aspect of the ill side of things. We can trace the opera-
tion of his mind from his earliest days, when he com-
menced his parodies at school; when he brought out The
Snob at Cambridge, when he sent Yellowplush out upon
the world as a satirist on the doings of gentlemen
generally ; when he wrote his Catherine, to show the
vileness of the taste for what he would have called
Newgate literature; and The Hoggarty Diamond, to
attack bubble companies ; and Barry Lyndon, to expose
the pride which a rascal may take in his rascality.
Becky Sharp, Major Pendennis, Beatrix, both as a

208 THACKERAY. [ CHAP,

young and as an old woman, were written with the same
purpose. There is a touch of satire in every drawing that
he made, A jeer is needed for something that is ridi-
culous, scorn has to be thrown on something that is vile.
The same feeling is to be found in every line of evely
ballad.

VANITAS VANITATUM.

Methinks the text is never stale,
And life is every day renewing
Fresh comments on the old old tale,
Of Folly, Fortune, Glory, Ruin.

Hark to the preacher, preaching still!
He lifts his voice and cries his sermon,
Here at St. Peter’s of Cornhill,
As yonder on the Monnt of Hermon—

For you and me to heart to take
(O dear beloved brother readers),
To-day,—*as when the good king spake
Beneath the solemn Syrian cedars.

It was just so with him always. He was “crying his
sermon,” hoping, if it might be so, to do something towards
lessening the evils he saw around him. We all preach
our sermon, but not always with the same earnestness.
He had become so urgent in the cause, so loud in his
denunciations, that he did not stop often to speak of the
good things around him. Now and again he paused and
blessed amid the torrent of his anathemas. There are
Dobbin, and Esmond, and Colonel Newcome. But his
anathemas are the loudest. It has been so I think nearly
always with the eloquent preachers.

Y will insert here,—especially here at the end of this

1x.| THACKERAY’S STYLE AND MANNER OF WORK. 209

chapter, in which I have spoken of Thackeray’s matter
and manner of writing, because of the justice of the
criticism conveyed ,——-the lines which Lord Houghton wrote
on his death, and which are to be found in the February
number of The Cornhill of 1864. It was the first
number printed after his death. I would add that,
though no Dean applied for permission to bury Thackeray
in Westminster Abbey, his bust was placed there without
delay. What is needed by the nation in such a case
is simply a lasting memorial there, where such memorials
are most often seen and most highly honoured. But
we can all of us sympathise with the feeling of the
poet, writing immediately on the loss of such a friend :

When one, whose nervous English verse
Public and party hates defied,

Who bore and bandied many a curse
Of angry times,—when Dryden died,

Our royal abbey’s Bishop-Dean
Waited for no suggestive prayer,
But, ere one day closed o’er the scene,

Craved, as a boon, to lay him there.

The wayward faith, the faulty life,
Vanished before a nation’s pain.

Panther and Hind forgot their strife,
And rival statesmen thronged the fane.

O gentle censor of our age !
Prime master of our ampler tongue |
Whose word of wit and generous page
Were never wrath, except with wrong,—

THACKERAY.

Fielding—without the manner’s dross,
Scott—with a spirit’s larger room,
What Prelate deems thy grave his loss ?

What Halifax erects thy tomb ?

But, may be, he,—who so could draw
The hidden great,—the humble wise,

Yielding with them to God’s good law,
Makes the Pantheon where he lies.

[oHap. 1x.

INDEX

INDEX

A

Addison, 125, 157, 168, 164
Ainsworth, Harrison, 65, 73
Austen, Jane, 90

B

Ballads, 23, 25, 32, 168—183 ;
the charm of Thackeray’s
verse, 169

Ballads of Policeman X—, 22,

6

Barry Lyndon, 17, 18, 25,
70—76, 124, 207; tirade on
gambling, 73—75

Becher, Anne, see Carmichael
Smyth, Mrs.

Boehm, Mr., 58

Bonnington, the Artist, 7

Bowillabaisse, 180--183

Bow Street Ballads, 169

Box of Novels by Titmarsh, 76

Brooks, Shirley, 22

Bulwer Lytton, 64, 65, 73, 78,
90, 193, 195

Burlesques, 139--153; Major
Gahagan, 189—153; Legend
of the Rhine, 140—143 ;
Rebecca and Rowena,
139, 144--153, 195

C

Cane-bottomed Chair,
179, 180

Cardwell, Mr. 48

Carmichael Smyth, Major, 4

Carmichael Smyth, Mrs.
(Thackeray’s mother), 3, 4

Catherine, 25, 42, 65, 66, 67,
72, 207

The,

Charter House, the, 4, 15, 70,
120

Chronicle of the Drum, 175, 176

Clanricarde,: Lord, 34

Clarendon, Lord, 36

Congreve, 157, 162, 168

Constitutional, The, 8, 14, 50

Cooper, Fenimore, 78, 79

Cornhill Magazine,
50-57, 135, 209

Cornhill to Cairo, Journey from,
21, 25, 28

Cox’s Diary, 139

Crowe, Amy, 41

Cruikshank, Genius of, 43

Crystal Palace, The, 171, 172

The,

D

Damages Two
Pounds, 169, 170

Denis Duval, 56, 57

Dennis Hoggarty’s Wife, 70

Dickens, Charles, 8, 17—20,
26, 27, 48, 62, 65, 91

Doyle, Richard, 41, 147

Durham, Mr. (sculptor), 38

Aundred

E

Edgeworth, Maria, 90

Lind of the Play, The, 168

Linglish Humorists of the
Highteenth Century, 154, 157
—167

Hsmond, 16, 38, 45, 49, 57,
122-1385; a consecutive
whole, 124; style and
language, 124-126; a tour
de force, 126; date of story,
126, 127 ; the characters, Es-
mond, 128--130; Lady Castle-
wood, 130--132 ; eatrix,

214

132—135 ; melancholy tone,
135 ; characteristic of
Thackeray, 136, 137, 186,
190

Hxaminer, The, 37

F

Fielding, 108, 123, 127, 133,
157, 159, 166

Fitz-boodle Papers, 67—69

Fitzgerald, Edward, 30, 31

Forster, John, 43

Four Georges, The, 46—48,
154—156

Framley Parsonage (Trol-
lope’s), 51—53

Fraser's Magazine, 14, 21, 22,
29, 62—76

G

Gahagan, Tremendous Ad-
ventures of Major, 139, 140

Garrick Club, The, 10 note,
27, 58

Gay, 157, 160, 166

Goldsmith, 157, 159, 160, 166,
16

Gownsman, The, 6

Great Hoggariy Diamond,
The, 14, 15, 25, 66, 191, 207

Grey Friars, 5, 70, 120

H

Hayes, Catherine, 18, 33, 65

Hayward, Abraham, 29 note

Higgins, Matthew, see
Omnium, Jacob

History of the next French
Revolution, 76, 189

Hogarth, 28, 30, 31, 127, 157,
]

Houghton, Lord, 209

I
Irish dialect, in Thackeray,
174, 175
Trish Sketch Book, 25, 28, 88

THACKERAY.

J ’
Jacob Omniums Hoss, 168,
169, 171
Juvenal, 207

K
King Canute, 168

L

Lardner, Dr. Dionysius, 64,
193

Leech, John, 21, 22, 41, 42

Legend of the Rhine, 139, 140
—143

Lever, Charles, 25, 53, 78, 90

Lntile Travels and Roadside
Sketches, 76

Lovel the Widower, 9, 52, 53,
116

M

Macready, 10 note, 27
Maginn, Dr. (Oliver Yorke),
4,

Marochetti’s bust of Thack-
eray, 58

Marryat, Captain, 91

Maxwell, Sir W., 31

Men's Wives, 69, 70

Miss Tickletoby’s Lectures, '76

Motony’s Account of the Ball,
173, 174

Mrs. Frank Berry, 70

Mysteries of Udolpho (Rad-
cliff), 188, 190

N

National Standard, 8, 9, 116

Neate, Charles, 48

Newcomes, The, 38, 41, 46,
114—121; full of satire,
115—117 ; touches of pathos,

INDEX. 21

117, 121; Clive Newcome,
118, 119 ; two tragedies, 121
—129

New Monthly Magazine, 21

Novel, functions of the, 92—
94, 109, 110, 184; the sub-
lime in novels, 188—190;
the ludicrous, 191—194

Novels by Eminent Hands, 78,
79, 139, 195

0

Omnium, Jacob, 31, 53
Oxford, 48

P

Paris Sketch Book, 21

Peg of Limavaddy, 178, 179

Pendennis, 38, 108—-114; a
natural young man, 108—
110; Thackeray’s digres-
sions, 111; the purport of
the story, 112, 113, 191 °

Philip, Adventures of, 56, 57

Pope, 157, 161, 166, 207

Prior, 157, 165, 166 °

Prout, Father, 53

Punch, 21, 22, 24, 29, 41, 59,
74—89, 169, 172

Q
Quarterly Review, 41

R

Ravenswing, Mr., 70

Rebecca and Rowena, 139, 144
—153, 195

Reed, Mr., 36, 39, 40, 58

Rejected Addresses (Smith), 79

Richmond-Ritchie, Mrs., 20, 53

Roundabout Papers, 53, 54

Russell, Dr., 4

S

Scott, Sir W., 90, 119, 122—
125,133, 145,153, 191, 195, 204
Seingalt, 74

art

Shabby Genieel Story, 66

Shawe, Col. Matthew, 20

Shawe, Miss, see Mrs. Thack-
eray

Skelton, John, 62, 63

Slaughter House, 5, 70

Smollett, 157, 166

Snob, The, 5—7, 207

Snob Papers, the, 22, 29, 42,
79—89; Thackeray’s mor-
bid horror of snobs, 6, 80—
82; too many of the papers,
82, 83; clerical snobs, 83,
84; Raleigh a snob, 85, 86 ;
Thackeray carried beyond
the truth, 86, 87 ; excellence
of each individual picture,
88, 89

Steele, 125, 157, 160, 164, 165

Stephen, Leslie, 20

Sterne, 157, 166, 167

Stirling, William, see Max-
well, Sir W.

Sturgis, Russell, 31

Swift, 125, 157, 158, 162

T

Taylor, Tom, 59

Tennyson, 5, 23, 27, 53

Thackeray, Anne, see Rich-
mond-Ritchie, Mrs.

Thackeray, Edward (cousin),41

Thackeray, Harriet (daugh-
ter), 20

Thackeray, Rev. Elias, 3

Thackeray, Richmond (father),

3
Thackeray, W. M., of Hadley
(grandfather), 3
THACKERAY, W. M.—
no biography of him, l,
2; birth, 3; parentage,
3, 4; school-days, 4, 5;
university career, 5—7;
studies art at Paris, 7;
his drawings and illus-
trations, 7, 8, 380, 31,
8l; newspaper specula-

216

THACKERAY, W. M. (cont.)— ,

tions, 8—10, 116; takes
up literature as a pro-
fession, 10; sensitiveness
to criticism, 16; means,
8, 9, 33, 56; pseudonyms,
14, 25, 28, 30, 42, 66, 67,
69, 70; connection with
Fraser's Magazine, 14, 21,
22, 29, 62—76; idleness,
7, 15, 19, 137; character,
19, 59—61; generosity,
60; marriage, 20, 21;
connection with Punch,
21, 22, 24,29, 41, 74-89,
169, 172; publication of his
works in numbers, 26, 27,
38; his friends, 27, 31;
conversational powers, 31,
32; residences in London,
33; candidate for Post
Office appointment, 34—
36, 44; for post at Wash-
ington, 36; his views on the
just rewards of literature,
37, 38; ill-health, 39, 40,
50, 58; appearance, 39,
49, 50, 58 ; the skeleton in
his cupboard, 40; career as
lecturer, 43-48, 154 ; his
lectures, 154—167 ; jour-
neys to America, 45, 46;
stands for Oxford, 48, 49;
becomes editor of Corn-
hill, 50—57; his house at
Palace Green, 56; col-
lateral work in connection
with his novels, 57;
death, 57
As a writer—

His realism, 184, 186, 187,
188; style, 124—126, 196
—201; easy, 196, 197;
lucid, 197—199; gram-
matical, 199, 200; man-
nerisms, 200, 201; his
morbid horror of snobs,

THACKERAY.

Tuackeray, W. M. (cont.)—
80—82; so-called cynicism,
59, 60, 206—208; Irish
dialect in his works, 174,
175; Dickens and Thack-
eray contrasted, 17—20,
26, 45, 46; digressions,
lll
Thorns in the Cushion, 54 55
Timbuctoo, 5—7, 23
Times, The, 14, 172
Titmarsh in the Picture Gal-
levies, 76
Titmarsh, Michael Angelo, 14
15, 21, 25, 28, 66
Titmarsh, Samuel, 15
Travels in London, '78
Trollope, Anthony, 51, 52, 55,
56

v

Vanitas Vanitatum, 168, 208

Vanity Faw, 7, 21, 25, 27, 39,
90—107, 109, 113, 122;
faults attributed to it,
90—95; Sir Pitt Crawley,
96, 97; the double story,
Becky Sharp and Rawdon
Crawley, 78—104; Amelia
and her two lovers, 104—107

Venables, George, 4, 5, 31, 70

Virginians, The, 49, 112, 127,
137, 188

W

Wandérings of our Fat Contri-
butor, 76

White Squall, The, 40,176—178

Willow Tree, The, 67—69, 195

Winchelsea, 57

Y

Yellowplush in Punch,42,77,78
Yellowplush Papers, The, 17,
62—65, 192, 193, 207

R, CLAY AND SONS, LTD., BREAD ST, HILL, E.C., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK,

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